


As we are watching the sky unwinding

by therudestflower



Series: I'd count my blessings but you can only be expected to count so high [2]
Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: As it should be, Because Luke Maybank exists and speaks, Canon Typical Marijuana Use, F/M, Found Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, JJ having a Nice Day, JJ lives with Pope's family and is adored by many, Keep JJ Maybank safe 2k20, M/M, Multi, Poly Relationship, Post-Season/Series 01, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Queerplatonic Relationships, Safety, Sharing a Bed, Touch-Starved, Trust Issues, Verbal Abuse, a long overdue tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:22:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 45,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23832310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therudestflower/pseuds/therudestflower
Summary: There had to be blue skies eventually. Even for Maybanks. Even for JJ Maybank.In which JJ is very safe, very cared for, and very loved. That's what we're all here for, right?
Relationships: JJ & Kiara & Pope (Outer Banks), JJ/Kiara (Outer Banks), JJ/Kiara/Pope (Outer Banks), JJ/Pope (Outer Banks), Kiara/Pope (Outer Banks)
Series: I'd count my blessings but you can only be expected to count so high [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1744066
Comments: 311
Kudos: 345





	1. No matter what they say, we're gonna be okay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a series of non-linear, but all in the same story oneshots that focus on JJ living with Pope's family, and being in hard to define relationship with Pope and Kie. The nice stuff and the hard stuff, usually at the same time.

After shitstorms, there had to be blue skies eventually. Even for Maybanks. Even for JJ Maybank.

Pope’s house always had food, _always,_ which wasn't even at the top of the list of the ten zillion things that were great about living there. 

A lot of days he had to unload trucks at Jamison’s before school, but the rest of the days he still woke up first. Without an alarm, he slowly woke up, taking in how Pope had shifted so much that his legs were on top of JJ's, and he had to kick him off before climbing out of bed. He didn't pause to listen before coming downstairs, because he didn’t have to be scared of what he’d find because it was always Ms. Heyward drinking coffee and clipping coupons. 

“You look like a ruffled q-tip honey,” she’d say, or something else that could be an insult but still spread warmth through JJ’s chest and made him want to sit down right next to her and never get up. 

Mrs. Heyward offered him coffee and said, “Excuse me?" when he tried to leave without eating anything, and so he did and by the time he was done with his Eggo and peanut butter, Pope was down which meant he got to hang out with Pope _right away,_ which was another good thing about life now. 

Pope was totally crusty in the morning. He squinted for at least an hour and didn’t say a word until after he’d had coffee and lay his head sideways on the table and groaned. 

“Dude, what are we doing today?” JJ asked when Pope’d groaned long enough that history showed he was ready to talk. 

“School,” Pope said. “We spend all day together at school.” 

That wasn’t even a little true, Pope and Kie spent all day together in honors classes and JJ spent all morning in normal classes, and all afternoon at the tech campus. At least he saw Kie between classes, now that she’d convinced her parents to take her out of Kook Academy. 

“After school. Life isn’t just school."

“Work. We both have to work.” 

“ _After_ work. Dude, can you think more than four hours ahead at a time?” 

“Homework. Maybe you remember, I’m still trying not to be an incarcerated person. It’s too late for you but.”

JJ kicked him under the table. “Remember to talk to her about it at school, okay? Us and Kie man, we haven’t done anything in days.” 

With John B, they were always on the same page. They could have entire conversations with a look, most of the time one of them didn’t have minutes on their phone, but they could still find each other without even talking about a plan. It used to be that way for all of them, but now they made plans and stuck to them desperately, and freaked out when someone didn’t show up. Now that it was getting cold, and the entire cut wasn’t their playground, they ended up back at Pope’s house more than anything else. 

“She probably will come over,” Pope suggested. 

“Yeah,” JJ said, glad to finally get where they literally always did, “We’ll talk about it before, then remind her at the end of the day, okay?”

* * *

After, a lot happened. A lot of police, a lot of crying, a lot of Barry, a lot of locking himself in the bathroom the one time he went home and waiting to die, a lot of DCS, a little bit of foster care.

That was all another story. 

The story now though was this. 

The good people at DCS would much rather pawn him off on people he actually knew, and when they started quizzing him on relatives and the only people he could come up with had a felony conviction which they didn’t like, he haltingly asked, “Can I live with friends through? Friends with parents?” and the answer was Yes. 

He wasn’t murdered or raped in foster care like he’d always expected, even though he was so prepared for it that by the time Heyward and Pope came to get him 22 days later, JJ cried and fell asleep in the flatbed of their truck, with Pope’s hands on his shoulders, finally able to let his guard down. He slept for almost a day straight. 

When he woke up, he tried to get Pope to come with him to the last party of the summer. 

“No, man,” Pope said. He was lying in his bed with his feet propped up on his desk. The Heyward’s fit another bed into Pope’s bedroom, slotted between bookshelves and old shoes and painted miniatures. JJ didn’t notice it the first night, he just fell asleep on Pope’s bed but he didn’t want to sleep anymore he wanted to _do something._

“You don’t get it,” Pope said, “things aren’t like that anymore.” 

“You already lost the scholarship, didn’t you?” JJ said, smacking his foot. 

“No, I mean...our parents. Look, my parents can’t really handle any more trouble. Kie’s too. Everything kind of died after John B...”

“Died,” JJ said, “What, all the weed and beer disappeared when he died? Grief is powerful, am I not allowed to self soothe?” 

“I really wouldn’t man. My parents wouldn’t like it.” 

“Fuck,” JJ said, “well they’re not my parents, and I want to have a nice welcome home, okay? The second I show up this party is going to be like ‘Oh my god, oh my god, JJ’s back,” and you’re going to miss it. 

The party was actually shit. No one he liked was there, and Pope was right. It was all dregs, the people who needed a party because there was no other option. People like JJ. 

Deputy Shoupe yelling at him to get off the roof of the bait shop, even though he was minding his own fucking business, was also shit. But the worst thing was the way when he got back Heyward was so mad he didn’t even yell. 

He sat down at the square dinner table that was in their living room because it wouldn’t fit in the kitchen, and JJ hovered by the door. “Sit down,” Heyward said. 

“Oh, you know, I have the restless leg so I’m just gonna--” 

“Son, I am very tired even if I hurt kids, I barely have it in me to sit up so just sit the hell down.” JJ had about ten very good and distracting responses to that, but if Heyward was being quiet then it worked better if he was too. He sat down and waited. 

“That is the last time you bring the police to my door, do you understand?” Heyward said, slow and quiet. “They might think your white boy bullshit is cute, but they’ll kill Pope if he blinks wrong, are you willing to live with that?”

“I wouldn’t let anyone hurt Pope,” JJ insisted. “He wasn’t even there.” 

“Ohhhh,” Heyward said, “you can stop bullets, then? If the police brought you by and saw one of us holding a remote and decided to shoot, you could stop that? You’re not here to put us in danger, you’re here to go to school and work and generally grow the hell up.”

“Aren’t I here for the $634 a month?” JJ shot back. "I know that's how much you're getting." 

Heyward laughed, and he kept trying to stop and then he laughed some more. “You stupid kid, there are a lot easier ways for us to get money. I don’t want to send you back, got it? I’m not asking you to be a choir boy, but my God, just be less stupid, okay? ‘For the money,’ for the love of God.” 

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Maybe they stay together all the time because it’s better than being alone, or maybe it’s because Kie and Pope actually want to fuck each other and JJ wanted to be near them all the time except when that happens, or maybe it’s what JJ thinks it really is which is that

When they’re together it sometimes felt like they were waiting for John B to show up, and he was late _again._

“I always forget how cold it gets,” Pope said on the walk to school. “It’s like, this short circuit in my brain, like my brain is trying to protect me from it.” 

JJ pat him on the face, then bopped him in the head with the water bottle Ms. Heyward forced on him a few days ago. A big perk of living with the Heywards was that when the store had stuff they needed, they just got it. 

“Look at that,” Heyward said one time, “our shrinkage has gone way down. Turns out we could have been saving money just _giving_ our merchandise to JJ.” 

“I knew it all along,” JJ said, “I don’t know why it took you guys so long.” He still stole from most rooms he entered, but not the store, and not their house. 

On the way to school, Pope always said what he had to do that day several times. “I have English with Kie, and we have the presentation on Macbeth that we are doing with Carolyn and Matt Sumner. I have AP Psych with Kie and we are reviewing for the final. I have Calc and my review packet is done and we have a practice test....” 

On and on, literally multiple times and eventually JJ would repeat it back, usually almost perfectly but when it wasn’t correct, Pope would get really worked up and say, “No, my presentation is halfway done, not done!” like JJ saying the wrong thing would change anything. 

“Pope, it is so stressful to be you,” he said, “you do it to yourself, you know. Just breathe.” 

Pope yanked JJ’s arm and pulled him close enough to put an arm around him. “I should just keep you with me all the time.” 

“You honestly should,” JJ said, “You go take over the world, just give me ten percent of the net.” 

Kie was always at school before them, and when they found her by Pope’s locker like every other morning, she already was annoyed. 

“The bullshit is strong this morning,” she said, barely pausing the oncoming tired to let Pope kiss her and open his locker for her to drop her books in. “My parents just took me off the schedule for three days in a row. How messed up is that? That’s no tips, no free food, I’m just stuck with you two.” 

“Oh no,” Pope said softly, sarcastically, “what will we do?” 

“Pardon me, I will dump you both and I will not hesitate.”

“Why did you get taken off the schedule?” JJ interrupted. 

Kie reached over and patted him on the shoulder then face, appreciatively. “Thank you, my new favorite. I got in a fight with the new hostess at the wreck, so my dad is putting me on opposite schedules with her. You know, if they mess with her hours she could break their windows, but they can do whatever they want to me. Are you guys working after school?” 

Pope was, and JJ was bussing tables at the hotel but not until 5, which Kie was very happy about. 

“Okay, so, get stoned, at my house?” she said in a tone that made it clear that disagreeing was not an option. Not that he would ever disagree. 

He and Pope only ever went to Kie’s house when her parents weren’t there. It was kind of weird, because they all knew each other and her parents knew full well that when she wasn’t at home or working, she was with them. But having two full-on Pogues walk through their door was Too Much, so it was better for them to not know about it. 

Their house was literally so big that they could smoke in Kie’s room and there would be no smell on the other side of the wall. Another change in their lives was that it was much more complicated getting pot, because of the Barry thing and the Dad thing. 

But that was another story. 

This story was, they were still able to get it, and it was also easier just to keep it at Kie’s house. Losing John B’s house, and the much rarer option to go to JJ’s house meant their options for places to go unobserved by Responsible Parents shrank to almost nothing. There were still _some_ spots, obviously, but it was getting colder, and the only indoor ones were shared with other Pogues. 

“Do you know what?” JJ said, after they’d been passing for a few minutes. They were lying on Kiara’s floor, and his head was by her feet. After asking, he pushed up her pant leg and was feeling the place where her leg turned into her ankle. 

“What, you have a new foot fetish?” 

“John B dying really cramped our style. Last time this year, we were all staying at his house for days at a time.” 

Kie yanked her leg away, so JJ sat up to see that she’d just done that so she could sit up too. “We were only doing that because he was out of his mind because his dad died.” 

“We’re out of our minds now, aren’t we?” 

“Yeah,” Kie said, “and we’re still together.” 

  
  


* * *

  
  


Kie was more willing to get in trouble with her parents than Pope--and by extension JJ--was, which meant that she was the one who perfected how to sneak into their bedroom. 

She dropped JJ off at the hotel, and Ms. Heyward was there doing turndown service, so she waited around to drive him home. The three of them had gone on a recognizance mission when JJ got home to retrieve stuff from his dad's house that didn’t fit in a garbage bag, but his bike wasn’t there and he was much more motivated to out where it went than to save for a new one. 

That created new problems, but that was another story. 

This story was how much it felt like TV to be driven home by his foster parent, and be asked how his day was and what kind of stupid decision he made. Everyone in the kitchen liked Ms. Heyward way more than him, so she’d talked them into giving JJ leftovers that they were taking home. 

“So,” Ms. Heyward said, “what did you learn in school?” School was a blank, so he just recited the specs on the blow torch he read about in a magazine during welding, and she said, “Seems like all they teach you in that school comes out of a catalog.” 

“I don’t know what to tell you, ma’am,” he said, “It’s a really bad school.” 

Another nice thing about the Heyward’s was that JJ could usually guess when Heyward was home, and he was pretty much always the exact same, so after a while, JJ didn’t even worry that much about where he was in the house, he just went straight up to their room. 

Pope was lying in the bed in a t-shirt and boxes squinting at a notebook. He had a calculator pinched between his chin and chest. Pope only noticed JJ was there when he grabbed the calculator away. 

“I will murder you if you distract me,” Pope said, deadly serious. 

JJ stepped onto the mattress and pressed his forearms against the low ceiling. He walked to the side of the bed he usually slept on and leaned over, using the pressure of his arms against the ceiling to hold him up. “Did Kie tell you she’s coming over?” 

“Yeah, that’s why I will murder you if you distract me. Like you’re doing now?” 

“Do you think you guys are gonna,” he clicked his tongue, “you know, do the business? Do the dirty? Just get right in there and--” 

Pope kicked him, and JJ purposely fell right on top of him. He stayed there and continued. “Don’t worry, it’s cool, I’ve invented a bunch of reasons why I want to hang out downstairs with your dad.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


The Heyward’s house was one of the only cut houses JJ spent time in with an upstairs and downstairs and initially he exploited the hell out of that by jumping down off higher and higher steps, which was about the most fun that anyone could have during storms and when you were terrified to cause your friend to die by cop racism. 

He wiped out super bad one time. He didn’t know the mechanics of what really happened, but he heard heavy footsteps so he sat up fast and tried to get away before they reached him, but failed. Heyward grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him up. JJ tried to pull away, but Heyward wouldn’t let him, he turned JJ’s arm and cursed at the blood that was dripping off a scape on his elbow. 

While Heyward walked him over to the sink and rinsed the blood off his arm, he told JJ off about, “This is the ultimate stupidity, you are sixteen years old I know you have more brains that this, kid.” 

“I can do it,” JJ snapped. “I’m not a baby.” 

Heyward let go of him and JJ used that to swipe the blood away before turning the water off and look for a cloth to press to the scrape. Heyward was still in the kitchen and he kept talking. “This house isn’t an amusement park, got it? I don’t have any desire to see you in a body bag. Hey!” he yelled when JJ reached for a dishcloth. JJ yanked his hand away, showing that he knew he made a mistake. 

“How did you live this long? That’s a hell of a way to get an infection. I don’t want to hear about your being a baby, if you act this way, you get treated like a child. Now hold still.” 

Which was a fucking terrifying thing to hear, and JJ’s heart beat hard while Heyward took his arm pressed paper towels on it until the bleeding stopped. He wrapped it in clean bandages. While he did, he kept right on about, “What if the DCS comes tomorrow and thinks we did this, or thinks we can’t control you, then what? This isn’t allowed. You have to think, you stupid kid.”

JJ stared at the white bandage on his arm, and the place where Heyward had taped it even though this kind of bandage held onto itself. “I won't do it again,” he promised. 

Sometimes he thought about ways to mildly hurt himself around Heyward again, just to be called a stupid kid and told how bad it would be if DCS took him away and JJ wasn’t there anymore. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


While Kie and Pope did whatever they did, JJ watched TV with Heyward. Pope’s family was no Kook family, but they had more money than he and John B’s families ever did, and they always had cable. The kind that could record and had a lot of pointless TV, which gave him plenty of food shows to watch after Heyward fell asleep. 

JJ alternated between TV and checking to make sure Heyward was still breathing until Pope came downstairs and said, “Hey are you coming up?” which meant they were done being Pope and Kiara and ready to be Pope and Kiara and JJ. 

“You don’t like,” Pope tried once, glancing at Kie while he went “you don’t want to be part of everything, do you?” It was while they were walking home, after JJ had banged on the door and demanded that they stop because the three of them had to go to the pharmacy before it closed.

“Like in the world?”

“No, I mean. Like, how you’re part of everything except the physical stuff?” 

Relief fell over him because he hadn’t imagined it, right? That it wasn’t just the two of them that had changed, and it wasn’t just the sleeping thing. “Oh. I mean, I am part of it right?” 

“Yes,” Kie said, “totally. You just never said anything about you know, getting more physical than you already are. But we should talk about it.” 

JJ stopped walking. “What do...do I have to do that to get the other stuff?” 

“No!” Pope and Kie said, simultaneously and loudly. “No,” Kie confirmed, “Not at all.” 

“You just want me for my body,” he said in an affected voice, trying to lighten it up. They smiled, but waited for a real answer. “Let’s just keep things the way they are,” he said, sidestepping a confession, “It’s really good right now.” 

He crawled over Kie and Pope, wedging into his spot between the wall and Pope’s back. Pope lifted his arm, giving JJ permission to hook his arm below it and hold onto his shoulder.

“I have to be out of here at five, guys,” Kie said. She always let them know, like her banging around in the dark didn’t tip them off every morning. 

In the morning he would be up early for work, and Ms. Heyward would be annoyed if he didn’t eat, then school, then he Pope and Kiara might do some wandering, maybe they’d get high, then maybe something on TV and maybe the next morning it all would still be safe and good. 

Good things had to happen, even to JJ Maybank. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I threw all my favorite things in a pot for this, including the title which is from a fave, the song Weekend in Western Illinois by the Mountain Goats. Totally different state, very relevant lyrics. (The chapter title is also from them, from the song San Bernardino. Do you spy a theme??)
> 
> Please comments, love comments, they make me so happy!


	2. And you'll breathe easier just knowing that the worst is all behind you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> JJ is safe and loved. He's working on believing that. (Hurt and comfort all at once)

Early on, JJ decided that Pope’s parents just never went through a real home visit, and that was why they weren’t acting right before JJ’s caseworker came. 

Ms. Heyward picked JJ up from the hotel even though she wasn’t working that night. 

“You like me, you really like me,” JJ joked. 

“Yes I do,” she said, “And remember how much I like you when I tell you this: Your caseworker is coming at the end of the week.”

JJ’s good mood vanished. Didn’t evaporate, because evaporation left traces. His good mood was wiped out of existence. 

DCS didn’t like coming to Kildare, as far as he could tell, which meant that up until now, one of Pope’s parents took him to the mainland once a month to be looked at and asked questions. Only one time JJ’d come home to a social worker in their house. It went fine, and it was even finer when JJ got so high he wasn’t sure he had hands, so his hands couldn’t possibly be shaking anymore. 

At least they had warning this time. But, “That’s not a lot of notice,” he said, pulling on his seatbelt. Ms. Heyward wouldn’t start the car until he did. 

“No,” she agreed, voice low. Annoyed. “Heyward can get Pope to cover the store, but I’ve got to do some blood magic to get off work.” 

“They want both of you?” JJ asked. Only one of them took him to the DCS offices. 

“It’s better if it’s both of us,” Ms. Heyward said. JJ figured that was true, because maybe when there were two parents they would ask them the same questions separately like they did with JJ and Dad before, and now there were three people and that was just way more complicated. 

“Is it enough time to get ready?” JJ asked. 

Ms. Heyward turned out of the hotel’s private road and drove south. “Everyone adores me, honey,” she said, “I’ll get off work. I asked Nathan while I was waiting for you, he’s already switched your schedule, so come straight home from school. You’re much less in demand than I am, sweetheart, don’t worry about it.” 

That wasn’t what JJ meant. 

He wasn’t sure how many times he’d failed to lie well enough at school, and got told that a DCS lady was coming to his house to make sure everything was in order. There was a stretch of time in middle school when a social worker came to their house every month, and JJ got very adept at getting ready. If Ms. Heyward was going to pretend there wasn’t anything to do, that just meant she wanted him to get out of her way and do it himself. That was fine. 

It was easiest to get his shit in order first. When they got home JJ went upstairs and gathered the shit that belonged to him that would cause problems. No social worker had ever found his weed, grinder, papers, or his knife and now was no time to find out what would happen if they did. 

There was also a new wad of money that was definitely stolen, but that was an entirely different story. 

Pope came in while JJ was pulling the sheets off the bed JJ never slept on. “What are you doing?”

JJ turned around, pulling the green elastic-y sheet off as he did. Their room was small enough that JJ could reach out and use Pope’s shoulder of balance as he yanked the rest of the sheet off. “Hey dude,” JJ said, “you have to wash your sex sheets.” 

Pope’s eyes darted down to the sheets and wrinkled his nose. “It’s technically your bed.” 

“In name only, I’m not the one who does all sorts of pervert shit on it.” It was a deal early on, JJ wanted nothing to do with that and Kie and Pope agreed that their bed was just for sleeping, and the bed that was supposed to be JJ’s was for...the rest. 

JJ wadded up the sheets and threw them at Pope who yelped and jumped out of the line of fire. “Bro, I have never once seen you clean,” Pope said, “You fake vomited last week to get out of cleaning the kitchen. Hey, is this some weird complex stroke? Should I get an adult?” 

JJ ignored him and considered their bed. Technically, no one at DCS knew that JJ slept here with Pope every night, and Kiara most nights. They couldn’t. During one of the first meetings, while JJ was still in the group home, his caseworker made a whole thing about it. 

“You’re friends with Pope,” she said, “That’s great. You understand, once you are placed with his family, you can’t have a romantic relationship with Pope. Is that going to be a problem?” 

Obviously, JJ immediately laughed and said, “Yeah. No. Very progressive of you. But no.” Because JJ didn’t want candles or dates and definitely did not did not want to kiss Pope, or god forbid anything else. 

But if JJ had to line up every single thing in the entire universe in order of how important they were, Pope ranked above the ocean and weed and air. When the cops came for Pope, it took four seconds of thought for JJ to put Pope above not going to jail or possibly getting beat to death. Being a foster kid on an island that still contained people who wanted him dead and didn’t contain John B was infinitely worse than being on the Yucatan eating lobsters. But he came back to be with Pope and Kie. 

And no, he wasn’t going to risk that by letting their bed’s sheets be dirty, even if the DCS definitely couldn’t know that this was actually JJ’s bed. With that decided, JJ yanked their quilt off the bed. 

Pope got in front of him before he could go for the super super soft blue sheets, hands up and wide. “Whoa, whoa. What’s going on, Crazy?” 

It took a minute for JJ to remember that this wasn’t a secret, especially because it was happening at Pope’s house. He still felt his face get hot when he said, “My caseworker is coming here on Friday, or something. Can’t look like I’m a felon or y’all might kill me.” 

Pope widened his eyes. “Shit. Did you hide the--” 

“Yeah.” 

“Right, but also--” 

“Yeah, I got it,” JJ said, “Trust me. It’s just the house we gotta deal with.” 

In a wide sweep, Pope took in their room, stopping at the pile of sheets in the corner. “Okay. So. Okay. They check sheets for cleanliness?” 

“Yeah,” JJ said, “and a bunch of other shit.” 

“Okay,” Pope said, “We’ll do whatever you think we have to. But, what’s the plan after you rip all our sheets off? It’s ten at night, World of Suds is closed and we have to sleep. So taking the sheets off can wait until morning?” 

“You’re talking to me like I’m stupid,” JJ said. He felt his skin light up, like maybe he was going to fight even though that was the last thing he wanted. 

“Oh, I very much do think you’re stupid,” Pope said, “But no, this is important, it’s just not possible to do what you’re trying to do right now. We can hide or clean other stuff, but can we please have a bed to come back to when we do?” 

JJ took a minute to understand that. Pope wasn’t making fun of him, at least not in a new way. “You’re going to help?” 

Pope sat down on the bed pulling JJ with him. “Yeah, I don’t want you going anywhere. We’ll do whatever we need to do.” 

  
  


* * *

  
  


So JJ had help. That was cool. In a perfect world, the three of them would work the same nights and have the same nights off. Even better if they got to work together, but even Heyward didn’t have Pope and JJ to work together that much because he said, “I like when the children I pay actually _work,”_ and “Some people have sons who _listen_ to them,” and other things that JJ didn’t put that much thought into at all. 

But the universe did something chill, none of them had to work and Pope, JJ, and Kie all came home right after school on Wednesday. They were home alone too, which was always awesome because they could play music loud, and smoke out back and dare each other to drink olive water and fall asleep cuddled on the couch. 

They did a little of all of that and got really heated about the last slice of Oreo pie. 

Pope tried to sneak it out of the fridge while he and Kie were occupied comparing the length of their fingers. “They are distressingly similar,” Kie said. 

Glancing over her shoulder, JJ caught Pope, “Hey! Not okay. Put it down.” 

Kie turned around in her chair and gasped. “We all know that’s the last slice, Pope Heyward.” 

Pope gasped loudly. “Oh my God. I’ll treasure it so much then.” 

“Wrong,” Kie said, “You’ll give it to me, because I’m the guest.” 

Slowly, Pope backed towards the living room pulling the pie close. “That’s not really fair to me and JJ so I think--” he cut out and ran out of the front door, with JJ and Kie fast behind him. 

The pursuit lasted around Pope’s entire neighborhood, and by the time JJ wrestled the plate out of Pope’s hands, the pie was a dirt speckled smear. He almost made it home, before Kie tackled him yelling, “I am the _guest,_ ” and ended up in the kitchen, holding a dirty plate with no pie on it above her head, with half the pie in her hair. 

“Uh,” Kie said from where she was standing on a kitchen chair, “Hey, this feels as good a time as any to bring up that we have a major job to do? Operation Retain JJ?” 

She remembered. JJ didn’t know if he was happy or upset about it, but he felt something. 

“It’s not major,” JJ said, using the distraction to jump up and grab the pie. “I win. Double no take-backs I fucking win.” 

“You win the right to clean that dish,” Pope corrected, “And it’s pretty much the biggest deal. We’re invested in you not disappearing. We cleaned the sheets yesterday. Kie and I have vowed to keep the sheets free of teenage sex. What else?” 

The weird, warm feeling that JJ felt so much now warred with resentment that he had to file through terrified memories of some social worker walking slowly through his house and Dad stumbling to explain everything she thought was wrong, things JJ didn’t understand. 

Maybe that’s why JJ couldn’t think of a single thing. He was too young to understand what was happening back then. Clean sheets yeah, food was important, not doing something to get beat right before the visit. They didn't have to worry about that stuff, maybe. 

“I guess we should vacuum and like, get bad food out of the fridge,” JJ suggested. 

That seemed right. Pope and Kie must have agreed, because they all got down to work, and Kie took over eventually, suggesting what would be most obvious, which is how they ended up vacuuming the couch cushions when Heyward came home. 

“Whoa!” he said over the vacuum. JJ fumbled for the off switch and turned it off. “What’s going on?” 

“Getting ready--” 

“We’re helping. Being nice,” JJ cut Pope off. 

Heyward raised his eyebrows and chuckled. “Shit. I feel like I should ask if you kids are high, but if it’s something that made you clean, what’s the harm?” 

A little later, Kie made a show of saying goodbye to Pope’s parents and walking out the front door, then tumbled through their bedroom window a few minutes later. Pope was already in the shower. JJ watched her dig through his clothes and pull on his Pelican Marina shirt. She shook out her hair and looked in the mirror over Pope’s dresser. 

“Are you going to come to Aiden’s party this weekend?” Kie asked, “He asked if I’m dating Pope or I’m dating you. I feel like we should go just to mess with his cis white man brain.” 

The weekend was after the home visit and anything could happen after that. “Can you come over here and mess with _my_ cis white man brain, please?” Kie turned around and crawled into bed, scooting so she was lying with her head on his chest. JJ held her close. “You can tell him that you like Pope for his body, but me for my brain.” 

“Nah,” Kie said, “Wizard of Oz. You’re the Lion, he’s the Scarecrow.” 

“You’re Dorothy?” JJ teased. 

“I’m the Tin Man,” Kie corrected, “I’m all heart, baby. I’ll come over after the visit on Friday, okay? It’s all going to be fine.” 

“Fuck, I know that,” JJ said, “It’s all good.” 

  
  


* * *

  
  


The problem came when JJ tried to deal with Pope’s parents’ shit. 

JJ knew they smoked up sometimes. They were shit at hiding it. Their liquor cabinet was “locked” and it was all it one place. JJ’d been in enough normal houses to know that was fine, good even. But JJ figured there was more shit that he didn’t know about, so he had to figure out what. And it wasn’t like they showed that much interest in doing it themselves. Ms. Heyward told him she got off work like it was a big pain, but Heyward didn’t say a word. That’s fine, JJ never needed help. 

He was just being _helpful_ but Heyward didn’t think so, especially when he found JJ checking under their mattress. JJ shouted when he felt hands on his back. He jerked upright and saw Heyward, and he didn’t have to see his face to know he was mad, especially when he grabbed JJ’s shoulders. 

“Don’t touch me,” JJ yelled. Heyward was always putting his hands on JJ’s shoulders and it didn’t mean anything that it didn’t hurt. He was still touching JJ to make him do something and that _sucked._

“What the hell are you doing?” Heyward yelled. 

“Back off,” JJ shouted, “Fuck. You can’t grab me like that.” 

Heyward geared up to say something then stopped. “What the hell are you looking for?” 

“I don’t know. Whatever you’ve got. You didn’t _tell me._ ” 

“Tell you what? Who do you think we are? You want me to draw you a map of all the drugs you’re imagining?” 

“I don’t know!” JJ cried. “Fuck. Yeah, I fucking do, since I don’t know your spots and you weren’t doing jack. Unless maybe you just wanna hand whatever you’ve got over to DCS tomorrow, get me out of here real fast.” 

Heyward stepped back, looking shocked. Fuck him, was it that big a deal that JJ didn’t want them to get in trouble? 

“This is about the visit?” he asked. 

“Yeah,” JJ bit out. “You weren’t doing anything. I’ve been through a lot of these, there’s a lot to do unless you don’t give a shit.” 

Heyward was silent. He took a loud breath, which he did sometimes. “I’m sorry I scared you, JJ. Come downstairs with me, let’s talk about this.” 

It wasn’t like JJ had a choice really. He knew Heyward wasn’t going to hit him, he never had before and especially wouldn’t the day before a visit. But JJ still felt on edge and like he could barely sit still in the kitchen chair across from Heyward. 

“What do they check for?” Heyward asked quietly. “Tell me what happens, and we’ll make a plan.” This was a trick. JJ knew that. Heyward was pissed and maybe he would just make sure the social worker found whatever he said so she’d take JJ out right then. Heyward was going to take what he said and use it against him. 

“I need to have a toothbrush,” JJ said, his mouth running off without him, “they’ll get upset if I don’t have one.” 

Heyward blinked, looking JJ over like he had brain damage. “We bought you a toothbrush, is it gone now?” 

“No,” JJ said. His face was on fire. He was so _dumb_. 

“Are you using it?” 

“Yeah.” 

“No issue there. What else?” 

“The electric and water have to be on Friday,” JJ said. 

“They’re paid through the month. What else?” 

“There has to be food.” 

“There is food. You know there is. What are you afraid they’ll find?” 

Getting ready was always worse than the visit. Mostly, Dad would just get out of JJ’s way, not yell at him for touching bottles to throw them out or hide them, but not really help. JJ read that as Dad not wanting DCS to take him though, because if Dad did, then he wouldn’t avoid marking up his face, or manage to be coherent when the social worker came by. 

Sometimes, Dad would suddenly have lots of energy, and help JJ haul garbage out of the house to burn out back. He’d buy lots of food, and make jokes like, _“Maybe I’ll make you some meatloaf, huh?”_ When that happened, the house wasn’t just livable, it was clean. Dad would ruffle his hair and say _, “No one’s coming between us. You’re my boy, ain’t no way I’m letting you out of my sight,”_ and JJ would ride on that and feel like he wasn’t even lying to whoever came to their house and that good feeling would last until the Next Time. 

More than once though, Dad would grab his wrist when JJ tried to hide bottles and tell him not to bother. Dad would knock over the neat piles JJ made. And while JJ put John B’s food in the fridge and tried to figure out ways to make it look like he had clean clothes, Dad would just follow him around and say, _“You know, I say the word and they’ll take you, right? Get you off my hands. Maybe I should, huh? What are we playing around for?”_

Heyward was in his way. He was stopping JJ from getting ready. He wanted to fail the inspection because he didn't want JJ anymore. 

“What do you think is going to happen?" Heyward repeated.

“Like if you--” with a jolt, JJ shut up. Heyward didn’t look like he was sick of JJ and the stupid things he was saying, he looked like a social worker or a teacher and all at once JJ realized he’d said way too much. “I guess it doesn't matter. It doesn’t matter what they find if you don't want me here.”

Heyward closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “Jesus. We should have done this sooner. JJ. They just need to check that you’re alright, and you are. We don’t have to fake it. No one is panicking because if they walked through the door right now and saw you in one piece, nothing would happen."

JJ struggled to speak past the ringing in his ears. "But you told me not to get hurt, or get in trouble. Because you don't want them to take me."

"Yeah," Heyward said, "You getting picked up by cops or walking around here beat up would create problems. So would depriving you of a toothbrush but we're not doing that. If we didn't want you, you wouldn't be here, you stupid kid. Proving you’re safe isn’t an emergency. We don’t have to trick them, you never should have had to in the first place."

Sometimes when things happened, bad things, JJ’s brain got high all on its own. JJ left the universe even though his body was still there. And whatever he heard or saw and whatever happened to him, he didn’t have to deal with it until later.

This wasn’t one of those times. Heyward sat across the table, with tired eyes and grey spots in his hair, still wearing the coat he came in with. The refrigerator hummed behind him, and JJ could see the magnet from Nero’s Pizza. JJ could feel the back of the chair pressing into his spine, and all at once he felt that every muscle in his body was coiled tight. 

And it didn’t have to be. 

_Proving you’re safe isn’t an emergency._

“They might tell you that you can get rid of me,” JJ said, his voice clear.

Heyward laughed, high and short. “We ain’t getting rid of you. You’re here on purpose. We did a hell of a lot of paperwork, talked to a damn shrink to get you here. I’m not saying that it was a burden, I’m saying it’s no accident, not something we’re looking to undo. Far as I’m concerned, whoever comes has a dozen kids they’re seeing tomorrow, and they know you’re safe here. Just answer their questions, don’t be high, and we watch a movie. That’s it.” 

JJ thought, and felt the floor under his boots, and air coming into his lungs. “I did this with my dad,” he admitted, “It was always--I guess to a kid it was scary. Felt like my world was gonna explode if I said something wrong or she saw the wrong thing.” His arms were crossed tight over his stomach, but they didn’t have to be. JJ uncrossed them and rested them on the table. 

“This is different, I guess. I don’t have to be scared about this,” he decided. 

“No,” Heyward agreed, “we don’t.” 

  
  


* * *

  
  


The home visit took all of thirty minutes, with a social worker named Corrine who had huge eyes and JJ already knew her. She mainly wanted to know how school was going and probation was going and whether JJ was looking forward to the weekend. 

_We don’t have to trick them,_

_you never should have had to in the first place._

“That was boring,” JJ said when it was over. He waited until the door was closed behind the Corrine for three seconds before sharing that assessment. 

“Yes it was,” Ms. Heyward agreed, turning around. “I’m so bored, I think I’d like to make another pie. Since the piece I saved for myself mysteriously disappeared. 

“Don’t know anything about that ma’am,” JJ said, smiling despite himself and he followed her into the kitchen. “I’ll help you though, to be neighborly.” 

Heyward also thought it was boring, he said, “Nothing to it, huh? She didn’t even look under our mattress.” 

“Still good I checked,” JJ said. 

Kie came home first, appearing in the kitchen loudly saying, “I knocked! Hello! I’m here,” over the disco music Ms. Heyward turned on. She wasted no time inviting Heyward to dance, and even less stealing the bowl out of JJ’s hands to steal some filling. 

Pope came later, since he was closing the store. JJ saw him smile when he walked into the kitchen where the music hadn’t stopped, but made a show of looking annoyed while he dropped his bag and pulled JJ to his side. JJ glanced to make sure the parents weren’t looking before quickly kissing Pope by his ear. 

“Visit went good? You’re still here, obviously,” Pope said over the music. 

“Yeah of course,” JJ said, “No one would ever wanna get rid of me.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Never Quite Free" by the Mountain Gots
> 
> I had no plans for this to be a chapter fic, and it still kind of isn't? More two strongly connected oneshots, I just really got pulled in by the wonderful idea of this boy being loved, but knowing that it's complicated. 
> 
> Let me know how this hits you! I've written more in this "verse" but I'm not really sure how to put it into the universe! Do you want it in the universe?


	3. Now I'm wearing my boots which always guarantees a good showing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember how JJ's experience with a lot of DCS and a little bit of foster care before coming home was another story? This is that story. Takes place before the 1st chapter.

Before everything got better, the hospital lost JJ’s boots and no one adequately understood how fucked up that was. 

JJ found his boots in the Fune Property’s garden shed in March. They were wedged behind an old mower with the laces tied together. They were covered in long dried mud, but JJ leaned over and grabbed them after putting the mower away. He stuck his head out of the shed, checking that one of the rich fucks who lived there hadn’t decided to come exploring. Turning back to the boots, JJ pressed his palm to the sole of one and decided they’d probably fit. 

The tennis shoes on his feet were split in the left sole and had holes along the outside edges of both shoes. Every few weeks he had to find duct tape and close new holes. These boots were nearly new. The grooves in the sole were still well defined, and they were no holes. And they were jet black, not steel-toed but they looked it. They looked like they could turn a sloppy kick into something lethal. 

JJ needed them. 

“So you steal from the only job you have right now,” John B said, drinking on his porch while JJ carefully cleaned off the mud, alternating between the hose and a cloth that was quickly saturated with mud. “They know you’re the only one who goes in there.” 

JJ snapped the cloth in John B’s direction, speckling him with mud. “You think Mitch Fune is checking that shed? ‘Oh, oh, my secret treasure, must see how my shoes are doing.’ These belong to their last yard bitch who clearly was not as hard up as I am because they had another, better pair of shoes to walk off in. It is just.” 

“And when the ex-yard bitch sees you in their shoes?” 

JJ jabbed one wet boot in John B’s direction, spraying three times as much grimy muck on him. John B dropped his beer and lunged, chasing him like they were kids. JJ ran around the house twice before stopping around a blind corner and tackling him. John B went fighting, but JJ pinned them with a cartoonish look on his face that screamed “murder.”

“I kick them to death with my shit-kicking boots. No one’s ever fucking with me again. I’m permanently invincible.” 

Turned out, in addition to every-fucking-else that happened since then, the boots didn’t protect JJ from some idiots in the emergency room taking them away and _losing them._

“We’ll get you new shoes,” the third social worker JJ had talked to in 36 hours told him. Maybe there were more. “I bet they’ll have spares at Reed House.” She wasn’t the one who took pictures, or the one who got upset when JJ threw up on his pants. She was the one who was taking him to a group home now that the hospital said she could, and JJ did not like her.

The hospital people kept telling JJ he had a concussion which he figured meant that earlier on he'd been forgetting that. The world was hazy and too bright. He barely remembered what happened, like more than normal-not-remembering. He thought the remembered the moment the bathroom door got kicked in and Dad prying it away to grab him like he was some evil hulk, but maybe JJ made that up to bridge the memory of hyperventilating while he pressed his body against the locked bathroom door, and the moment he came to trying to sit still while a doctor stitched up a gash in his hairline.

With a soft voice for someone sticking a needle in his skull, the doctor said, “Hey you with us?” 

“What’s happening?” JJ slurred. 

“You’re at Kildare Hospital. I’m Dr. Nguyen” she said. In his peripheral vision, he could see that she was still working, but he couldn’t feel it. “I’m stitching you up on the side of your head. Earlier we took care of your leg, got that cleaned and stitched too. You have a concussion, and we’re waiting on the film of your wrist, but I believe it’s just a sprain. We’re keeping you overnight to make sure you’re okay.” 

“Awesome,” JJ said, already feeling himself being pulled back into half awareness. “So I’m totally fine, huh?” 

She stopped stitching and stepped into his line of vision. God damn it, her mouth was all pressed together and her eyes were pinched like she was trying not to cry. “The social worker is still here,” she said, “I heard them talking, it sounds like they’re finding a safe place for you to go. Should I get her?” 

JJ’s brain shot right out of the entire universe. He was dimly aware of being moved and talked to and he was pretty sure he talked back but all he was thinking was _fuck, fuck, fuck._

Eventually, he figured out what happened. Eventually, he figured he must have said something and now JJ was going to foster care. Just in case this wasn’t the worst week of his life. And eventually, he scammed them into returning his phone so he could text Pope and Kiara which was an entirely different story. 

JJ didn't even remember telling the truth, which was fucking unfair. 

Since the first time he’d sat across from a social worker and got asked, “What happened to your eye, JJ?” he’d spent an embarrassing amount of time imagining telling the truth. It was somewhere between a fantasy and a nightmare, or both at once. JJ imagined how his voice would shake and he'd say maybe something vague like, “It wasn’t an accident,” and a social worker would be like, "He's hurting you isn't he?" and JJ would cry and nod which was such pussy shit to voluntarily imagine. 

Now he had told the truth and he didn't even know how it went down because he wasn't even there. 

And his fucking boots were gone. 

“I’ll tell your caseworker to call the hospital to find your shoes,” the third social worker said in a voice that JJ knew meant no way that was happening. 

“Can’t they just find them now?” JJ asked. Leaving the island was fucked enough. He was fucking exhausted, this was literally the worst-case scenario he’d been charting in his head since he was a kid and it never involved not having shoes. “You’re going to take me on a ferry in socks? How do I call DCS on DCS?”

She didn’t think that was funny, but neither did JJ.

  
  


* * *

  
  


For _weeks_ no one was nearly sympathetic enough when JJ pointed out that he was still wearing fucking fourth-hand pull-on canvas shoes with hearts drawn on them _. And_ he got in trouble for stealing a sharpie to draw over them, which made no sense. 

He shut up about it in the group home, he wasn’t stupid enough to go around bitching and coming off like a spoiled brat. There was legend all over JJ’s family about Maybank cousins and aunts who got taken to the mainland and got chewed up in DCS. JJ was ready for a fight. He’d seen enough prison movies to know he had to take someone down within 24 hours of arriving. Ideally, he wouldn’t still be dizzy and nauseous, but JJ was scrappy, no concussion would stand in the way of surviving.

It didn’t take long to choose who to beat down. Actually, Ivan chose himself when he got in JJ’s space while he was waiting outside the bathroom. “First time?” he asked, mockingly. 

“Could you like, just back up? I don’t wanna pass out from your breath.” Ivan wasn’t as tall as JJ, but he was burly and had a wild look in his eyes. 

“Hmm. You’re not off juvie, I can tell that by your shadow alone. Lemme guess, Daddy went a little too far with the belt, and you just couldn’t take it anymore, right?” 

Ivan reached up to poke the stitches above his ear, but JJ batted his hand away. “Nah,” he said, low and easy smiling wide, “ _Your_ dad, actually. Caught me fucking your mom and took exception.”

The fight was short and dirty, and JJ was on his way to losing before the staff came and broke them up. But it did the trick right away, no one fucked with him like they did with Henry and Juan. 

Not that it was a weekend at the spa. When JJ inevitably did have to kick someone while wearing canvas shoes, the group home staff did not find it funny when he said, “Not like I could really do any damage.” 

If the threat of juvie wasn’t over his head, JJ would have run day one. They weren’t exactly hanging out weed in the pill line, and the straight world was sharp and loud and _sucked._ Hell, he knew that even with the threat of juvie he would have run Before, but now John B wasn’t around to run off with and JJ was exhausted. He missed Pope and Kiara. He missed Dad. Every once in a while, painful reminders that John B was missing would overwhelm him, but he couldn’t be sad about that. Whenever he felt sad or anything really, JJ stuffed it behind the big door in his head. 

He had to survive, and he had to get back to Pope and Kiara.

And he had to get his boots back. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


Every time someone brought him to the office where he met with his caseworker, Lori, he brought his boots up. Lori was super short, old, had a mole on her nose he tried not to look at, and she had a habit of staring at JJ until he answered her questions. But she always had coke in her cubicle and she took what he said seriously, whether it was, “My mom’s a tweaker, even if you find her you won’t let me go with her,” or “I’ll be a lot more cooperative if you just call the hospital and ask about my boots.” 

At first, she was like, “It’s normal to miss your belongings.” 

Then she was like, “Now that we know you’re not going back, we’re going to arrange for a safe way for you to get your belongings, like your shoes,” and JJ was like, “The hospital took them,” and she said, “That’s one problem that’s not solved,” like getting his shirts was JJ’s only other _problem._

And, getting his shit wasn’t even a problem solved because the sociopaths working at the group home that day said JJ couldn’t even wear any of his clothes. 

Nadia was working. She was like three years older than him, and she compensated by being a bitch. The rule was that anything they brought in was searched in front of them, so JJ had to sit in the front office and watch her run her ugly evil hands over his clothes. 

“None of these are appropriate,” she said. She picked up his Pelican Container Container shirt and stuck her hand inside, holding it up to display her palm showing through holes in the letters on the back. It felt as invasive as if she was sticking her hand inside a shirt he was wearing, and JJ physically strained not to reach out and grab the shirt away from her. 

“Why,” he ground out. 

“Holes,” she listed off, “rips, drawn on, cut and reveals an inappropriate amount of skin.” 

“Are you slut shaming me?” he asked. 

“All the stuff you have now is fine,” she said and JJ was too gone to snap that the stuff shit they bought him at Walmart looked like a fucking nightmare. He barely was able to demand that she lock his clothes up with the rest of the shit he’d get back when he wasn’t imprisoned in a fucking group home. 

He told Lori the next time he saw her, expecting her to agree that it was evil to not let him wear any of this own clothes. “I’ve had that shit--stuff--for years,” he pressed on, “They’re from my home, and they’re broken in, they’re not stiff like this Walmart crap. You took me off the island, and now I can’t wear anything that’s mine?” 

Lori was quiet for a moment. “When you get home, the Heywards can help you decide if you want to wear your original clothes. But you were supposed to have intact clothing all along.” 

“What?” 

“Your father was responsible for making sure that your clothes were intact and clean. The Heywards will be too.” 

“You’ve never been on the Cut,” JJ concluded, “Everyone looks like that.” 

“You are far from my first case from the Cut,” Lori corrected, “and you’re not the first one who found out that their clothes didn’t meet the requirements for their placement. It’s okay, it’s not your fault, but it’s wrong.” 

  
  


* * *

JJ hated the concussed version of him who made this happen. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


JJ had nothing left to lose when Lori calmly told him that none of his relatives met the requirements for him to be placed with them, and that there weren’t foster homes on Kildare that could take him. He knew Pope’s parents hated him, but Kiara’s parents hated him more, so what did he have to lose, really, when he asked if she would contact them. 

“They don’t like me,” JJ said. 

Lori had been taking notes but stopped. “Do you want to live with people who don’t like you?” 

JJ thought of how Ms. Heyward had held him long after Pope let go, how she let him cry. He thought of how Heyward had called him names for as long as JJ knew him, but somehow he made “little bastard” and “white maniac” sound totally different, how it felt like attention, and maybe something else. And how when JJ went home with them after they found out about John B, it wasn’t hard at all. He wasn’t scared for a minute. 

“Not that kind of don’t like me,” JJ explained lamely. “The nice kind.” Lori must have understood, because she promised she’d call them. 

He was fucking embarrassed that he’d asked, and he didn’t have a way to figure out how hard Pope’s parents laughed and how insulted they were by the idea until Lori would gently break it to him next time he saw her. A few days later, Nadia pulled him out of group to take a phone call in the office. He didn’t ask any questions, he would talk to Trump or Satan if they called, just to get out of group. But it was Lori. 

“So, Mr. and Mrs. Heyward are going to move forward with being your kinship placement,” she said, talking fast, “There are a few things they need to do, but their preliminary background check looks good, so we should be able to get you there pretty quick.” 

“What?” JJ asked. 

“Mr. and Mrs. Heyward want you to live with them,” Lori said, and that was pretty clear but JJ was sure that he misunderstood. “So once everything is in order, and we do one more thing to make sure we can’t find your mom, you’ll be with them soon. Is that what you want?” 

Thinking about Pope--thinking about being home again--opened a door to all the things JJ pointedly had not been thinking about. That home didn’t have John B anymore, and that he’d betrayed his family and they all knew it. And that there was a life that wasn’t guarding your food and being asked by a million different group home adults how he felt today and being afraid to die all the fucking time. 

He could go home. 

“Yeah,” he said quickly, “I want that.” 

  
  


* * *

  
  


After what felt like years of JJ’s existence shrinking to the group home and the DCS office, seeing Pope’s parents was like a glitch in the matrix. 

They were in the waiting room when JJ walked into the DCS office, and Ms. Heyard didn’t waste a second before hugging him. JJ jumped, his body attuned to expect an attack, but Ms. Heyward pressed on, holding him and saying, “Oh God, honey I’m so sorry it took so long.” 

JJ didn’t understand that, but he didn’t really care. Ms. Heyward smelled like the ocean and Pope’s house and he pressed his eyes into her shoulder so that if he cried, no one would see it. A hand settled on his back, and JJ knew that was Heyward so he didn’t have to worry about that either. 

Ms. Heyward gently lifted his head, and stroked where the stitches were gone from his head. “Okay,” she whispered, “okay, seems like we’re going back there and they’re gonna ask questions? Do you know how to do that? Keep it simple? We’re going to get you home, okay?” 

JJ hummed and nodded, not able to talk just right then. Ms. Heyward fussed with his hair and for a second JJ let himself pretend that she was his mom, and she had been all along. “Is Pope here?” he asked. 

“Not this time,” Ms. Heyward said, “don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time together when this is over. You’ll be sick of each other.” 

“Is he okay? And Kie? They’re okay?”

“They’re sad,” Heyward said. JJ looked over and noticed how tired he looked. “They miss you and--it’ll help to have you home.” 

Ms. Heyward even held his hand when Lori brought them all to her cubicle, and that helped a lot, especially when Lori started listing out how fucked up JJ was. 

It turned out, JJ was on probation, had been both physically and emotionally abused and neglected, did not understand healthy family structures, attacked a fellow resident just the night before, should be assessed further for mental illness, learning disabilities as well as substance abuse, and required ongoing support beyond a safe home. 

“Wow,” JJ said, “why don’t you just send me to prison, skip all these steps.” 

Ms. Heyward squeezed his hand. 

“No,” Lori said, “What I’m saying is, you have your own needs. For example, JJ is very unhappy with his shoes, it’s important to get him new ones.” 

Fuck her. Lori could seriously get hit by a bus. JJ wasted time explaining what was wrong with his mom, and telling the truth about how he wanted to be a professional surfer, and how he really wanted life to go back to normal, just to maybe get hurt less. Fucking waste of time, talking to anyone fucking ever. 

“Ma’am,” Heyward said, “We know all sorts of crap about JJ. That’s nothing new.”

Ms. Heyward tacked on, “We’re excited JJ is coming to us. We’ll buy him shoes.” 

“I want my boots,” JJ corrected. “I don’t want new shoes.” 

“And you don’t have them?’ Ms. Heyward asked. 

“They got lost at his group home,” Lori said. 

“They got taken at the hospital,” JJ said, voice louder than he meant it to be, “You said you called them. Did you seriously lie?”

Lori frowned and looked at her computer screen. “I’m sure I did. It was a long time ago.” 

“It was two weeks ago,” JJ corrected, still mad about all the other stuff. 

“If it was two weeks ago,” Ms. Heyward said, “They’re probably still there. When we get back, we’ll go and check, okay? If your shoes are there, we’ll take them home and have them for you.” 

JJ seriously doubted that they were going to do that, no one else had done shit, but he nodded and tried to follow along with the rest of the meeting. He didn’t care if Pope’s parents went to trouble looking for his boots, if he was home soon enough he’d do it himself. He didn’t need them to buy him new clothes or meet with his school, or any of the things Lori was talking about. JJ just needed them to take him home. 

When it was time to leave, JJ got hugged again, and he held tight but managed not to cry. 

“So you’re coming back for me?” he asked. 

“As soon as they let us,” Ms. Heyward assured him. “We’ll see you soon.” 

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


JJ didn’t really sleep the night before Heyward was supposed to come get him. Not that he’d been counting sheep before. Nothing ever happened, really, but JJ still jerked awake every couple hours and woke up feeling worse than when he’d gotten into bed. 

This time though, it was because he couldn’t wait until morning, when Heyward and Pope were coming to get him. 

JJ lurked in the central room by the front doors for as long as staff would let him. He’d spent weeks organizing every cell in his body to be on guard and tough. But now he was like a kid desperate to go home. He invented reasons to walk past the glass windows in the front doors. The dumb canvas shoes on his feet squeaked as he walked. They were ripped on the edges now, but he hadn’t bothered asking for tape. When he got home he’d get his real boots back. When he spotted Pope through one of the windows, he gave up all pretenses. 

“Hey!” he yelled at the office, “they’re here! Open the doors!” 

Pope inside the group home wasn’t a glitch in the matrix, it was the entire matrix being ripped open. He looked around at the nailed down furniture and motivational posters with wide eyes, but mostly he looked at JJ. JJ knew he couldn’t just hug him, not with other guys still walking around, but he grinned wide and found excuses to touch Pope’s shoulder or his back while Heyward talked to the staff, and JJ pretended to listen to Miguel list out an inventory of what JJ was leaving with. 

Miguel pointed towards the room JJ was sleeping in. “You got your stuff?” 

“Don’t want it,” JJ said, “Just want my clothes.”

“Do you want to say goodbye to anyone?” Heyward asked. 

“No,” JJ laughed. He followed Heyward and Pope out the front doors, getting down the front steps as fast as he could. 

Pope pointed out his dad’s truck. “We drove over the bridge, so we wouldn’t have to wait for a ferry. Hey I bet I can convince my dad--” 

JJ interrupted him by nearly knocking him over with a hug. Pope returned it, maybe because he also needed to make sure JJ was real. “Whoa, easy there Captain Kirk,” Pope joked. Pope pulled away, and his eyes lit up. “Hey, we have a surprise for you.” 

Pope turned around and reached into the flatbed of the truck. He pulled up JJ’s boots. His actual boots, perfectly intact and there, real and in person. 

“Oh my god,” JJ cried, snatching the boots out of Pope’s hands. “You got them?” 

“We got them,” Heyward corrected. “Ms. Heyward and I went to the hospital right after we met with you, they were just sitting in lost and found. ” 

They were worn black, with knotted laces. Not steel-toed but they looked it. They looked like they could turn a sloppy kick into something lethal. 

"I told John B these made me permanently invincible,” JJ said, leaning against the truck to pull off the awful shoes he’d been stuck in for weeks. He had the wrong kind of socks on, but he wasn’t going to get blisters on the ride home. Maybe he could get new socks. JJ pulled on his boots, unable to keep from grinning at the feeling of being home before he’d even gotten there. 

Before they left, JJ took care to hurl the canvas shoes at the stucco walls of the group home. He took major satisfaction in the dull thud they made when they hit the building. 

“Ready to go home?” Pope asked. 

“Ready,” JJ said, “so fucking ready.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Golden Boy by the Mountain Goats. Did my best from knowledge from friends who work in group homes like this etc, but I know some things must be wrong! 
> 
> I love hearing from you!


	4. I hope you love your life now, like I love mine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Winter on the Cut has it's complications, but good spots too

First of all, Kildare High School dances were actually fun to go to. Like, they were lame as shit and the Pogues always cut when it got boring, but it was still fun. It wasn’t like the dances on TV. JJ figured the school knew that all their students were poor as dirt, so instead of princess dresses and blazers, they got costume contests for loose themes that could be achieved with spray paint and a popped collar. 

Pope took each costume contest extremely seriously. 

That year, the Winter Dance theme was White Christmas and Pope said, “Typical, I’m already behind.” Ms. Heyward said, “It’s a movie honey, we can all watch it after dinner so you can take notes.”

Kie couldn’t come over to watch it, though she did text them, _“not s a christmas theme in a public school won’t get shut down so don’t work too hard._ ” Everyone else was home, and even Heyward came into the front room while Pope was connecting his laptop to the TV so they could watch it and said, “Hmmm, I’ll take a family movie night.” 

They watched movies a lot now that it was winter and everyone’s work had dried up. JJ was waiting for it to stop one day, but it didn’t, and they got into a comfortable habit of him and Pope squeezed together on the wide armchair, and Ms. Heyward half watching, half reading, while Heyward came and went. 

White Christmas was a super old movie, with a lot of singing. Ms. Heyward knew a lot about the old movies they watched, and once in a while she would look up from her book and say something like, “Bing Crosby sang this in three movies.” 

Pope took notes, pausing the movie where it was streaming on his laptop to take screenshots. “I think it would be easiest to do their Army costumes,” Pope said, “we can just go with Dad to the mainland next weekend, and hit the army surplus.” 

“But the girls don’t wear army uniforms,” JJ said, pointing at the screen where the girls were wearing blue dresses. 

“They do later,” Ms. Heyward told them, darting her gaze between them, her book and the TV. “You could wear something nicer,” she suggested, “we have your sportcoat, and I’m sure we could get something for JJ from the church. I doubt Kie will be excited to wear a uniform to the dance.” 

“She’d take it over a 50’s dress,” Pope pointed out. 

“Well I doubt whoever JJ’s taking would feel the same.” 

JJ looked away from the screen. “What? Oh, no ma’am. I’m going with Pope and Kie.”

Ms. H raised her eyebrows. “You’re never going to get a girlfriend this way, kid. You’re a handsome boy, don’t tell me half the school isn’t trying to get you to ask them.” 

And that was kind of true, kind of. Before life got better, and JJ could get what he needed without lying that much, he’d tried the normal shit. He really had, and he’d tried doing all the normal sex stuff with enough girls for there to be a seriously incorrect impression that he would do that again. Which meant that despite the rumors all over school, Tiara Benson was hanging out by his locker, and Melanie Wells found excuses to be next to him in every single one of the stupid kid classes they had together and JJ didn’t exactly have a way to say, _“I’m actually not-sleeping with my best friends, not available.”_

“Believe me,” JJ said, injecting his voice with brightness, “I’d rather have options at the dance.” 

“Oh Lord,” Ms. Heyward said, “JJ. Don’t make me a grandmother.” 

Which was hilarious on more than one level.

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


It was in December, and things were okay enough to start looking around and figuring out what Now looked like. 

It was long enough after they found that John B and Sarah Cameron were alive and well for that to be another story. Which took a long time--there wasn’t a casual way to find out your best friend and Sarah were chilling in the Bahamas. There was some drama shit that went down, but that was all a total complete other story. 

This story was that John B said “not to worry” and he was “working” on getting them money, which was kind of dumb because they could tell he and Sarah didn’t have any, especially after what happened with the gold, but that was a different story. 

The story now was that they were all supposed to try to act sixteen, and they didn’t feel scared as often as they did, even before the gold. Or maybe that was just JJ. They had time to breathe, and that meant talking about who they were to each other. 

There were rumors at school that different combinations of JJ, Pope, and Kie were dating and/or cheating on each other. It was kind of funny, because even Pope and Kiara weren’t way into PDA, and they weren’t exactly posting Insta’s of bedroom cuddling sessions. It was when the most popular story was that they were in a “throuple” that Pope declared they had to find the right words. 

“Isn’t that basically what’s happening?” JJ asked. Kiara was driving them home from school, and Pope kept popping up from the back to make sure they knew how annoyed he was. 

“No,” Pope said, “I don’t subscribe to that. We’re not exactly having threeways.”

“So I don’t count? There aren’t words for what I am. That’s the best it gets” 

“That’s so not true,” Kiara said, “and we’ll invent the words if we have to.” 

Kie came over later with fourteen tabs open on her phone, and a mission. “I found some words for us”

“What, stoners? That word is always right,” JJ asked. He was grinding the weed at the edge of their bed, and Pope was sitting on the floor next to him, doing homework. It took a while, but Pope engineered the exact way to time his highs to not interrupt being a nerd--which meant that their chances to smoke together were few and far between.

“No I mean,” Kiara gestured quickly between the three of them. “This. I looked all over, even made a Tumblr account, and I think I figured it out.” 

“Tumblr?” Pope asked doubtfully; the first sign he’d been listening for a while. 

Kiara shushed him. “We are in a triad. A closed triad. We are all equally involved with each other and no one else. Pope and I are in a romantic and sexual relationship. JJ is in a queerplatonic relationship with both of us, and vise versa.” 

JJ paused his extraction of the weed from the grinder. “I didn’t consent to being called queer.” 

Yeah, his brain tracked back to Pope as often as it did Kie, maybe more often. And yeah, maybe he didn’t have a leg to stand on since an hour before this conversation JJ interrupted Pope’s studying to curl down on the floor with his head in his lap. But. 

“It’s a label for the relationship, not you. It just means we’re closer than friends, more significant than friends,” she clarified. “And it’s not just the touching, it’s that we’re all each other's top people, we don’t like being apart from each other, and so on. I’m not gonna have you all accuse me of being the girl when I got into how I feel about you, but yeah. It’s just different.” 

“That’s so complicated.” Pope said, “We should get a copyright.” 

“It’s more like I’m your dog. I think that’s more accurate.” JJ suggested. Pope looked up from his homework sharply, like JJ had said something bad. “You know,” he went on, “I mean, I’m just around trying to get pets and treats.” 

“So are me and Kiara,” Pope said, “We just sometimes do it more elaborately. That’s literally just love, dude.” 

JJ decided nothing bad would happen if he introduced more words, “I'm asexual,” he offered. He’d had that word for a long time, and known it was right, but hadn’t been ready to use it until then. “That’s why it’s so complicated.” 

Kie and Pope looked at each other. “Yeah,” Kie agreed. “We know. But that’s like, the least complicated thing about us.” 

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


When it started to get cold, JJ quietly made a bet with himself that Pope’s parents wouldn’t blame him for it. 

It was a universal fact that shit sucked on The Cut in the winter. It wouldn't matter if fishing was the best it was all year; tourism ground to a halt and with it all the money that they didn't manage to scrape off each other. 

Heyward’s store pretty much closed except special orders. His side work for Kooks left with the snowbirds. JJ lost his job temporarily, and Ms. Heywrad’s hours got cut. The only money actually coming in was Pope’s from essay writing--”tutoring” as far as his parents knew--and the money DCS sent to keep JJ alive. 

Winter with Dad meant he was cold until halfway through the school day, when his toes started feeling like they belonged to him again. The sketchy shit Dad did for money didn't have a season, JJ thought, but winter was always worse. 

Every year JJ got pulled out of gym to get a coat from the social worker’s office and everyone knew it. He lived on school meals and hid the bag of food he got on Fridays in his bedroom. All that shit fucking sucked, made much worse by Dad hating him for three months straight. JJ had to pay for every degree it got colder, every dealer that came by demanding money. It didn’t matter if JJ was careful not to cost him anything--the entire economy of the Outer Banks was his fault. 

As damn cool as it would be to control the seasons and just surf every day, JJ was not that powerful. So winter was not his fault. He was almost sure before, and now he was positive. 

Winter now meant that since he wasn’t working, JJ was in charge of making dinner three times a week. There was still always food, just less variety sometimes and usually not meat. Pope’s parents were home more, but that wasn’t scary it was actually good because they still had Netflix and watched movies together all the time which was so easy it was crazy. JJ still got the food bag on Friday, but he used it to stock the kitchen now; he always got ramen and he was getting really good at stir fry. 

JJ didn’t ask why they weren’t starving, because he knew that he’d be an idiot if he did, but eventually, Ms. Heyward mentioned that saving almost half what they made over the summer would get them through until spring break Kooks came through. Honestly JJ was so dumb for ever expecting these smart, good people to be the same as his dad. 

It helped a lot that he knew his presence grossed them $634 a month, and Ms. Heyward had admitted that once they bought him new clothes and a second pair of shoes, JJ was an alarmingly cheap child. 

“You don’t want books, you don’t want a computer, you don’t want special food,” she listed, by coincidence after Pope had asked for all three. “I better hope you’re not stealing what you’re not asking for, you know we’ll get it for you.” 

“So you’re making money off me?” JJ concluded, ignoring the rest.

“Hell if I know,” Ms. Heyward said, “we don’t have a ‘JJ’ section of our family budget.”

JJ was pretty sure they were making money, but he carefully decided that even if they weren’t, the Heywards would still almost-love him, the way they did now. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


The night of the dance, Ms. Heyward fussed over them in the front room while they waited for Kiara and her parents to come by. It turned out that having a family meant that the parents took pictures of them in costume before they left. It also meant that they had to be home by midnight. 

“That’s not a real rule though,” JJ informed Pope before they went downstairs. 

Pope kept buttoning his shirt. “You know that all of our parents’ rules are real, right? That’s why I always was like, ‘I can’t guys, my parents,” before you forced me to do stuff.” 

“Nothing ever happens,” JJ argued, “What, we’ll get grounded? We’re always grounded, we’re always here.”

“We’re always grounded because you keep forcing me to do stupid stuff,” Pope said. 

JJ stepped forward and put his hands’ on Pope’s shoulders. “Pope. We’re going to do exactly what they want. Your parents know we’re going to break curfew, we’re just doing our part in this parent/child/foster child relationship.” 

Without telling anyone, JJ had invented a girl he was going to the dance with because Ms. Heyward kept asking, and halfway through an unexpectedly long photoshoot she pulled him aside and said, “Where is Jaine?” 

“Oh,” JJ stumbled, “ah, she bailed. It’s cool.” 

Ms. Heyward made a sad sound and pulled him to her. Kiara’s dad noticed that he was gone and said, “Okay, let’s get some pics of the couple.” 

Kiara and Pope were still in front of the bookshelf ready to be photographed, but Kiara shook her head. “No, we just want photos of the three of us.” 

“Kiara,” Kie’s mom said sharply. She’d been on edge every second she’d been in their tiny house, like poverty was catching. “You’re going to want photos that are just you and your boyfriend. JJ understands.” 

“JJ understands,” he added. They may have words for what they were, but that didn’t mean anyone else got them. Kie looked like she was going to flip tables, but she caught JJ’s eye and read his mind. She nodded and dutifully posed with Pope.

And by the way, JJ was fully right, after all the photos were taken and they were about to leave, Heyward said, “Well, if you ain’t home at midnight you’re grounded if you ain’t home at six you’re no longer my kids.” 

“Oh sir,” JJ gushed, “we will be home at nine, if I have any say about it.” 

They got high in Kie’s car before going in, and Pope managed to inhale between lecturing on how ruined their lives would be if they got caught. They got out of the car and walked towards the school. It was already dark, so Pope took JJ’s hand while they walked. 

“Oh,” Pope said in a low voice. “Oh no.” 

Pope was very confident that they could win the costume contest, because ninety percent of the movie everyone was in fancy 50’s clothes, and that was easy enough to get in thrift stores since those people were dying all the time. 

They pieced together pretty authentic-looking uniforms like in the movies, and Pope literally sewed patches on to make them look right. The Army surplus didn’t have much that fit Kie, and Pope had spent way too much time stressing that her look wasn’t good enough.

“Okay, but we’re not the only ones doing this. Aren’t there more veterans than old people on The Cut?” Kie asked. 

Pope considered and shook his head, “No,” he said, “we’re choosing a less fun, but easier to emulate route. We have it in the bag.” 

Most of the girls were in dresses, not super 50’s ish that JJ could tell, but nothing like the cobbled-together uniform Kie was wearing. As usual, most guys were just wearing their normal shit. The few that did try had legit, starched Army uniforms.

JJ laughed loudly. “Oh my god,” he said, “Oh my god, you forgot about JROTC.” 

“Shut up,” Pope said, walking towards the school with determination. 

“Oh my god, half this school literally--” 

“Shut up!” Pope said. “They’re just wearing their 2020 authentic uniform. We put a lot of effort into this being authentic.” 

“Oh my god,” JJ said, “Come on. We can go in there and win best Triad.” 

Pope found the end of the line to get in and stood stiffly, practically pouting. Kie put her arm around his waist. “Pope, you worked really hard. You deserve to win.” 

“Someone who barely tried is going to win,” Pope said, “Like every year.” 

“Let’s dance, bet on who has the first fight, and bail,” Kie suggested. “Aiden has the first party, so we know where to go.” 

He did not look comforted. “We’ll steal the trophy,” JJ offered. 

Pope perked up. “Okay. Yeah, let’s do that.” 

Stealing the trophy, conveniently, was a three-person job. They got some dancing in, because Kiara insisted, but their time was limited before the real work began. While Pope and JJ hung out by the snacks, Kie tracked down the girls who planned the dance. She came back with intel. 

“The trophies are in the boy’s locker room,” she said, flipping her hair awkwardly. Honestly, JJ gave her the lowest stakes job because she was adorably bad at lying. “They said no way a boy would try to get his hands on them.” 

JJ mentally mapped where the chaperones were blocking off access to most of the school. “Okay,” he yelled over the crappy music, “I distract the adults, Pope gets them.” 

“So I get suspended, or they call the cops,” Pope protested.

Once again, JJ grabbed him by the shoulders. “Believe in yourself, Pope, you got this. It’s your destiny.” 

Kiara wisely did not come along to distract, “Not that I literally saved all your asses at the impound yard,” but instead went to pull the car up front for their fast getaway. JJ and Pope crept up to the hallway where JJ’s English teacher was looking at her phone, the only thing between them and the trophy. 

“Oh shit,” JJ whispered, “so fucking easy. Just wait until her back is turned, I got this.” 

JJ jogged up to her. “Ms. Z, hey. How’s it going?” 

Ms. Z looked up, startled. “JJ. Hello.” 

JJ grinned and walked up, sliding between her and the closest wall, forcing her to turn to keep her eye on him. Total force of habit, any teacher would assume JJ was the one who must be watched. “Hey, can I ask you a question about the book we’re reading?” 

Ms. Z’s eyes sparkled like this was her sad life’s dream come true. “Yes, of course.”

“Uh, what book are we reading?”

Honestly, JJ knew what they were reading, but it was so fun to watch Ms. Z’s dreams of saving JJ Maybanks slowly die, especially after his “promising improvements.” It was an awesome way to kill time until Pope raced past, and JJ took off after him. 

“Fuck yeah!” Pope yelled as they ran out of the school, way too fast for any of the adults they passed to catch them. They burst out the front doors, where Kiara was waiting with the engine running. 

Kiara saw them coming and threw the passenger door open. Pipe jumped in, and JJ grabbed the door tumbled into the backseat. Kie sped off, screaming happily. “We got it,” Pope yelled, holding a book-sized trophy over his head. “Fuck yeah, _Best Couples Costume Winter Dance,_ fuck _yeah.”_

It was way too early for any non-skeevy party, so they pulled up behind Heyward’s shop. Kiara killed the engine and turned on the internal car lights. JJ moved to the floor of the backseat so it was easy to shoulder his way up front, and pulled a joint out of his shirt pocket. Kie clocked it and rolled her eyes, but didn’t chew him out for bringing pot on school property. 

“Do you have a Sharpie?” Pope asked, “either of you?” 

Kie batted JJ’s arms off the center console, lifting it up to pull a marker out. Pope took it and carefully scratched a word off the sticker label on the trophy. The trophy itself was a piece of shit, some kind chipped gold painted of winged statue of liberty lady who had nothing to do with costumes. It probably cost twenty cents, but if it was worth a zillion dollars to Pope that was what it was worth.

With tiny movements, Pope wrote something on the label. JJ could see his slow smile before Pope held out the new label. 

_Best Triad Costume Winter Dance_

Kiara nodded. “I think it’s safe to say we are the most deserving triad at Kildare for this honor.”

“Totally,” JJ agreed. 

Pope grinned loopily, and held the tropy to his chest. “Oh man. So worth it. God, it’s not even nine. Nothing is going on for hours.” 

“We could go home,” JJ suggested. Kie and Pope turned toward him dramatically, scandal all over their faces. “What? Our night peaked, we just did a heist. And our house is fucking sick. I like a party as much as the next guy, but how good does our bed sound right now?” 

Kie started the car and pumped her fist twice. “Triad out,” she said, “we got trophies, we got labels, we got places to be.” 

First of all, Kildare High School dances were actually fun to go to.

“How bad will our parents freak when we come home before curfew?” JJ asked Pope. 

“So bad,” Pope said, “they’ll think we burned the school down.”

Second of all, sometimes going home was even better. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from You Were Cool by the Mountain Goats, which is a very this fic song. 
> 
> If you're inclined to make yourself a playlist of songs attached to this series, they're in the series notes and all songs can be found on YouTube (This specific one is unreleased, so YouTube is your friend). It's a very on point playlist not just for this fic, but for the series in general. 
> 
> Comments make me SO HAPPY! I am grateful for each one.


	5. But one of these days I'm gonna wriggle up on dry land

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> JJ is still very safe, very cared for, and very loved. But sometimes he misses his dad and wants to go home, even if he really likes his new family. Kind of. It's complicated.

Maybanks were basically the Cameron’s of the cut. You know, the Cameron’s had the governor on speed dial, and the Sheriff’s department had all the Maybank’s addresses memorized. Same thing. The Heywards were only the Heywards. 

JJ wasn’t sure what he was. 

At first, Dad was in jail. Because when JJ wasn’t around to get things ready, there was a crap ton of illegal shit in plain sight when the police came by after JJ was in the hospital. So that was his fault, he knew that, but it also chilled things out until the new year. Everyone at DCS talked like Dad would serve his sentence until JJ was an adult, like idiots, but at least JJ didn’t have to worry about Dad showing up the house or Heyward’s shop and killing him for now. 

Not that his cousins were exactly sweet to him in school. He _was_ still a family betraying snitch. 

And there were a lot of them. JJ had three cousins in his grade. Dad had a mess of half-sisters and brothers and every once in a while Dad would say, “Mark is gonna stay here a while,” and JJ would say, “Who?” and Dad would say, “Your uncle, dipshit,” and that was fine and not unexpected. 

The proportion of people JJ was related to at school went way up when he got on the bus to go to the tech campus after lunch. He showed up for “Metal Arts,” the first day and a teacher he’d never met read his name off the roll. She paused and looked up at where JJ was sitting next to his cousin Thad, and said, “No. Maybanks can not sit next to each other. Move.” 

And that was also fine and not unexpected. There were three classes for elementary school and JJ was never in the same class as his cousins. In fourth grade his teacher pulled JJ away from Matt in Shared Gym and said, “We can’t trust you around your cousins,” like they might blow up the school during soccer. But that was just fine, actually. It meant JJ never had to make a big deal that he’d rather roll with John B, then Pope, than the rest of the Maybanks. That made it easier when they didn’t run with them in high school, it was just the way things were. 

Still, he wasn’t just going to sit next to randoms when he was in a class with family. 

Thad raised his hand, and JJ stopped putting his shit in his backpack so he could get in on whatever Thad was about to do. “Um, miss?” Thad said, “JJ ain’t a Maybank anymore. No need to worry.” 

There wasn’t time to think. No need for it. 

JJ whacked the back of Thad’s head with the side of a closed fist. Fuck _him_. Thad hit back fast and hard. The next thing JJ could see, a school cop dragged him away from Thad. JJ’s shoulder was throbbing, and his bad wrist sent pain up his arm. Through the angry, numbing haze he could see Thad’s bleeding lip, and his cousin yelling, “He’s not fighting, let him go!” 

The tech campus didn’t have an admin office, JJ learned that on his first day of school while the school cop forced him and Thad to sit on opposite sides of the hallway, and use the officer’s cell phone to call their parents. 

Not parents, in JJ’s case. 

He was careful not to look at Thad while he called Uncle Bart. “Hey,” Thad said. Immediately, Uncle Bart started screaming. JJ snorted. Thad yelled “I didn’t do anything! No it was some other kid.” 

JJ glanced quickly at him. Thad didn’t look anything like JJ, his mom was Asian and he kept his hair buzzed all year. But just then he looked so much like family, the ache of it joined his shoulder and wrist in familiar throbbing. 

Thad fought to get a word in edgewise until he finally yelled, “Are you getting me or not?” rolled his eyes and hung up. He handed the school cop his phone. “My dad’s girlfriend is coming.” 

Immediate relief hit JJ. Uncle Bart wouldn’t have any issue spitting at JJ for betraying their family in the middle of school, but whoever he sent to get Thad wouldn’t know him. 

The security cop handed JJ his phone. JJ didn’t take it. “My foster parents--” he stopped, willing himself not to look at Thad. “Um. They’re working.” 

“You hit someone, you don’t get to stay here. That’s the rule,” the school cop said, with a lot less empathy than you’d expect from someone suffering from a unibrow. JJ debated whether it was a good idea to bring that up. 

JJ was pretty confident that getting in a fight on the tech campus was kind of like mall jail. The school cop hadn’t asked for his student ID, or called the admin office at school. He was almost sure they were just getting him and Thad out of there, no one had said a word about a three-day suspension. 

Pretty sweet, honestly. Especially since he’d barely been with Pope’s parents for two weeks, and he didn’t know enough to be sure that getting in trouble on the first day of school would do. He really didn’t want to find out how quickly he could ruin everything. 

He pointed to Thad. “His dad’s my uncle. She can pick me up too.” 

Unibrow Cop looked between them. Thad nodded quickly. “You want me to let you leave together? You were just pummelling each other.” 

“Family issue,” Thad said shortly. 

JJ could see Unibrow Cop doing the math, probably realizing that if he didn’t say yes he could be stuck standing over them for the rest of the day. “Try your foster parents,” he said lamely. “If they don’t answer, you can go together.” 

After a heartfelt voicemail left on Nero’s Pizza’s automated answer line, JJ handed the phone back to Unibrow and waited to get picked up. Apparently satisfied that they weren’t going to attack each other, he went to sit by the doors with the order for JJ and Thad to stay across the hall from each other. 

Thad watched him go, and once he was out of sight came to sit next to JJ. 

“Dad’s dating Jenine Nelson.” 

“Gross,” JJ said, “hope he’s getting his dick checked.” 

“She won’t tell my dad it was you,” Thad said, “I’ve got too much dirt on her.” 

There is was. At some point, JJ got added to the miles-long list of Maybank family grudges. And it was bullshit. 

“None of this was my idea,” JJ snapped. 

“What are you talking about?” Thad played dumb. 

“C’mon, what are people saying?” JJ asked. “What’s the problem, is it that I got my dad busted?” 

Thad shrugged. “Fuck, everyone knows Uncle Luke brought that on himself, that’s not your problem.”

“What then?”

Thad rolled his eyes and picked at his dirty nails. “You’ve always thought you were better than us, hanging out with John B and the rest of them. It’s damn typical. Look, everyone knows your dad’s a shit. You didn’t have to go snitching, you could have gone to family, we’d’ve helped.” 

JJ laughed. “The fuck? Y’all knew what was happening and didn’t do shit. Your fucking dad told mine that I stole a popsicle and just stood there while I got beat. Don’t need that kind of help.” 

“He didn’t do that,” Thad said, but JJ could see from his face that Thad knew it was true. “Even if he did, that’s no reason you can’t crash with one of us.” 

“I fucking wanted to,” JJ snapped, “you think I wanna live with freaking Pope Heyward’s family? They’re a bunch of tightwads, I can’t get away with anything. Not my fault that DCS hates us. None of this was my fucking idea. ” 

* * *

Okay, so that wasn’t the story, really. 

That was a lie. 

JJ didn’t want to live with Uncle Bart or Uncle Simon or the other apostles. There were reasons DCS barely looked before saying no, and no one needed to tell JJ what they were.

Ideally JJ would have some combination of getting the chill kind of drunk with Dad sometimes, and fishing together when he was in a good mood. And then, just when it was time for dinner, or when JJ did something stupid and was about to get it, _poof._ He’d live with Pope’s family, and get hugs and food and not be scared. Maybe he couldn't really have both but wasn’t _JJ’s idea_ that he didn’t get to see Dad at all.

“Everyone hits their kids,” JJ helpfully pointed out back when he was in the group home and it became super clear that no one was going to let him go back. Right at first, when his head was pounding he thought the group home might be juvie, at least sometimes, then he figured that maybe they were waiting for him to stop being sick but no one told him he could _never live with Dad again._

“That’s just not true,” his first caseworker Lori said, “but let’s imagine all parents did hurt their children, now and then. That’s not true, and it would be a problem if it was, but let’s accept that. Parents still are not allowed to injure their children, and they absolutely are not allowed to give them a brain injury.” 

“I don’t have a brain injury,” JJ laughed. “I’m just dumb, did no one tell you? That’s verified.” 

“You do, you suffered a mild injury. It’s not too bright in here, and I don’t know if you remember but you’ve complained about it several times. It must be really scary, to be in a new place and be confused, JJ. Even if your dad wasn’t looking at time, we wouldn’t be talking about you going back right now.”

The nice-mean people were the fucking worst. 

Corrine was his caseworker now. She was less nice-mean than old Lori, more dumb-nice and by January it was totally chill and not stressful when she came to their house. They had to make it look like JJ slept in the bed that was supposed to be his, and that was it. 

Both of the parents were home, and after showing off his report card and proving JJ had a bed, Ms. H invited Corrine into the kitchen for tea. “So,” Corrine said, with no warning, “your dad is being released on parole in about a month.” 

Everyone froze.

“Oh,” JJ said, “wait. Does that mean I’m going back to live with him?” He looked at Ms. H and Heyward, trying not to sound like a desperate six-year-old, “Because you don’t want me to leave, right? I don’t want to.” 

“No,” they said, at the same time, and right away, and god damn did that feel good. 

“Now,” Ms. H continued, sweet as could be, “I can’t imagine that Corrine here is suggesting that you just get dropped off with Luke Maybank.” Corrine hesitated and Ms. H’s eyebrows shot up. “Corrine’s job is to make sure you’re safe,” she said, a little loud. 

“Right, yes,” Corrine said, “JJ’s case plan was to stay here until you turned eighteen, because your dad was sentenced to be in prison longer than that. But, overcrowding, right? Okay, and it’s not like your dad being home changes things immediately, but that does mean that if you both want to, we can do some work to see if some contact would be safe.” 

Ms. H turned off the tea kettle, and JJ immediately registered that as an act of violence toward Corrine. 

“No,” Heyward said, shaking his head and stepping up to the table. “This kid still gets headaches from that bastard cracking his head open. God alone knows the damage that was done to him until now, and you’re telling me because his daddy conned his way out of prison early, it’s time for a reunion?” 

“Does my dad want to see me?” JJ asked, not really believing there was any point to this. 

Corrine nodded. “Yes, that’s why we’re getting this going before he gets out.” 

Dad wanted to see him. 

He could handle his dad wanting to kill him, but the idea of Dad not wanting to see JJ was too painful to even think about. But Dad wanted to see him. 

“Hold on,” Heyward said, “I don’t care if he wants to be the governor, he isn’t getting near our kid.” 

“It’s not like my dad’s a criminal,” JJ shot back. “Can’t I just hang out with him, or something? I’m almost seventeen. It’s my life. I ain’t too damaged to get two B’s last semester, huh? I ain’t _dead._ ” 

He didn’t know why he was yelling at Heyward, when two seconds ago he was begging to stay here, but it was happening anyway. Ms. H turned to JJ with wide eyes, like she was ready to yell, then her gaze flicked to Corrine who was still sitting alone at their table like she was going to get tea. JJ could see Ms. H reel whatever she was going to say back in. 

"JJ won’t see that man alone,” Ms. H said, “I will go to your supervisor, then her supervisor, as far as I have to go--”  
  


“I was alone with him for sixteen years!” JJ shouted. 

Ms. H raised one finger like she was putting JJ on pause and he shut up as fast as though she’d covered his mouth. 

Corrine raised her hand, like she was calling on herself. “Unsupervised visits totally aren’t on the table, that’s like four steps in. We might not even get there. Right now I just need to know if JJ wants to have contact with his dad. That’s only a question for you, JJ.” 

Fuck all these fucking people. 

This wasn’t part of the plan. He wasn’t supposed to suddenly become a domesticated animal, and it was his fault for getting used to fucking asking Ms. H for new notebooks and learning how to make hot cocoa and shit. This was supposed to be the worst year of his life, his dad was in prison because of him and John B was gone and he should be burning down Kook houses and living in alleys and--

Fuck them for treating him like he was six years old. He’d never had people making him dinner, or letting him fall asleep on them while he watched TV. JJ had never been someone who got protected. He wasn’t a bitchy Kook, he wasn’t soft like Pope. JJ Maybank was a goddamn warrior. He was almost seventeen--an adult for years by Maybank standards. He could handle Dad.

He was supposed to want to go home. 

JJ’s brain was a Tilt-A-Whirl of feelings and explosions at the exact same time as he started to feel like maybe he wasn’t here at all. 

He wanted Corrine to go away and never have said any of this shit. 

“You don’t want me to see my dad?” JJ asked his parents. 

Corrine jumped in. “It’s only up--” 

“No,” Heyward said. “You shouldn’t have been with him for sixteen years.” He pointed at Corrine, who seemed smaller every minute that passed. “These people fucked up not saving you sooner. We fucked up, assuming you were getting in fights and stole our food to be a little shit. You should have been here years ago. We fucked up royally, and we ain’t going backward.” 

Usually, when JJ’s brain got high on its own and he got not-sure if life was happening, it was when something bad was happening. Sometimes though, mostly lately, really unexpected stuff happened like Heyward saying other people fucked up, not JJ. His brain couldn’t handle that shit. It was leaving the station, fast.

He looked somewhere near Corrine. “Can I just talk to him on the phone?” 

“JJ,” Ms. H said.

“He can’t hit me over the phone,” JJ said. “That’s what I want to do.”

Corrine agreed, and explained that it might not happen until even a while after Dad go out, and also that guess what, she buried the lead because they had to talk to a lawyer and the cops to make sure that Dad didn’t kill him just in case prison didn’t make him a better person, but JJ wasn’t there anymore when that happened, so it didn’t matter. 

Ms. H tried to hug him after the door closed behind Corrine, but JJ jerked away from her and ran upstairs, slamming his bedroom door. 

Like some kind of goddamn kid. 

A while later, JJ didn’t know when, the door quietly opened. JJ had been waiting to be normal enough to sneak out the window, or at least open it to smoke out of, but when Pope walked in, JJ was still lying on his side of the bed, facing the wall, with his boots on. 

“Hey it’s me,” Pope said in too soft a voice. 

JJ groped for something to throw backward at Pope and came up empty. “What did they tell you?” 

“Ah, nothing?” He felt the mattress dip as Pope crawled on. Pope had his cold coat on, and when he started to touch JJ, he hit Pope’s arm and tugged on his coat. Pope got the message and shucked it off before coming back. They’d been at this long enough to figure out how each of them liked to be touched, and Pope went right to JJ’s favorite. He pressed against his back, and wrapped his arm around JJ so his elbow was resting on his side, and Pope’s palm pressed over his chest. 

“You’re such a cheater,” JJ said. 

“My mom,” Pope said, laughing, “I came home and she said, ‘JJ's upstairs, he might like if you hugged him, or at least asked what was wrong.’” 

JJ snorted. “A hug? That’s a lot to ask. We’re men.”

"Asking what's wrong too, that's just presumptuous. I can't do that, I'm just a boy."

They were quiet for a while, and Pope's weight on JJ's body slowly pulled him back into it. Back enough for him to be embarrassed, and maybe a little worried that he'd yelled at his parents, but mostly embarrassed. 

"Your parents don't want me to leave," JJ said. 

He felt like that was a ton of new information, but really it wasn't. "Yeah?" Pope said slowly. "Why is that coming up, did you do something?"

"I didn't do anything wrong." 

They kind of sat with that for a while. 

Someone knocked on their door. Pope reacted first, shrapnaling away from JJ and landing on the other bed. JJ sat up and rubbed his eyes and tried not to look like he was being queer-platonically spooned. 

Another knock, louder, then Heyward stuck his head in. He scanned Pope sitting on the other bed, fiddling in his backpack, and JJ too far settled into the double bed for him to just be hanging out. 

“You guys wanna swap beds?” Heyward suggested, sounding a little weary like all the times he had walked into them in barely arrived at weird spots in their room was getting to be too much. Pope shook his head. “JJ, we’ll get you an egg crate or something, I have never once seen you sit on your bed.” 

“Okay,” JJ agreed, watching Heyward carefully. It was kind of funny that they hadn’t been caught yet--well Kiara had been caught in their room which was a totally different story and JJ didn’t even get in trouble for that, it was hilarious. Heyward watched him, waiting. “What?” 

“It’s your night to make dinner. We let you have your feelings, now you have to take care of your responsibilities and make dinner.” 

Suddenly he felt a thousand miles better. JJ scooted to the end of the bed and stood up. “I was gonna make eggs.” 

“Live your dream, JJ,” Heyward said, stepping away from the door so he could leave. 

“I’m in trouble for yelling at you, right?” JJ asked as they went downstairs. 

“Oh you bet,” Heyward said. “Your mom too. Ain’t in trouble for what you said, don’t get it twisted, but I am not here to get yelled at by my son, no way.” 

Grinning, JJ jumped down the last four steps. Heyward sighed. “God damn it, JJ, I told you to stop doing that.” 

“I know, I know. You don’t want me to get hurt. That's like, your main thing.” 

“Yeah, it is,” Heyward said, messing with his hair while they went to the kitchen, “Glad you know that now.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod by the Mountain Goats, which is on an album largely about surviving abuse. Is this all a really elaborate ruse to get more people to listen to new music? That'd be a WILD use of time but it's possible! 
> 
> Thanks for being so awesome, I love all your comments and really look forward to hearing your thoughts!


	6. We are young supernovas and the heat's about to break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It wasn’t just Pope who thought school was the most important thing ever. His parents were totally obsessed. 

To JJ, the time between the Winter dance and Christmas break was a lot of bullshit tests before two weeks of freedom.

To Pope the time between the Winter dance and Christmas break contained _“life-defining final exams”_ and it looked extremely stressful.

Pope permanently moved into the nook at the end of their bed that he outfitted with a laptop charger, blankets, candy, and intermittent groaning at his school computer. “I found words for you,” JJ offered, leaning over the end of the bed and holding up his phone, but Pope didn’t look away from his book. “Generalized anxiety disorder. See? That’s why you’re so maxed out all the time.” 

“I don’t have generalized anxiety, I have very functional and pointed anxiety about finals,” Pope said, turning the phone screen away from his face. “You should too.” 

“Uh, special ed, bro. It doesn’t matter.”

Pope forcefully smacked JJ’s phone away. “Whatever, I really don’t care about your ‘oh whatever’ cool-guy attitude right now. _I_ want to go to college, so your shit does matter. I lost the big scholarship, which means I need about a thousand tiny scholarships, and no one is giving them out to mediocre Black men. I need to be excellent.” 

“You are excellent.” 

“Not helpful. JJ, bro, you know I love you, but I know the exact amount of anxious I’m supposed to be.” 

Which was extremely fucking anxious, like get the fuck out of the room anxious. 

Their room was a disaster area, probably not helpful to his studying. JJ made a new bedside table for them on the tech campus that they were supposed to spend Saturday morning moving into their room, but unpacking the existing bedside table ate into Pope’s study time so they had to stop _immediately_ , and now the new table was blocking the only floor space.

Getting the bedside table in was way more important than homework. It was a thing of fucking beauty. When JJ drew it up, Mr. Logan squinted and said, “Not sure you can do this by the end of the semester,” like JJ hadn’t mapped out exactly what he had to do in each class. He finished a week early like a mother fucking boss. 

The new bedside table had 2.4 times as much storage space, and a secret compartment, plus it was green. An honest to god masterpiece. Everyone at home thought so, even Mr. Logan was impressed.

“Listen, you freak, I’mma head but I’m coming back and we gotta put this room right before we go to the club, cause my table belongs in its rightful spot.” 

“Okay, okay.” 

“Not asking, telling. Be ready.” 

“Yes, please, Jesus, let me work!” 

So JJ tried to leave without running into Pope’s parents. It was barely nine on a Saturday, and there were limited hours before he had to work some bullshit Kook holiday party. Hours that could be spent with Kie, or second choice friends or getting high, or maybe just being alone and generally

not being interrogated about school.

Cause it wasn’t just Pope who thought school was the most important thing ever, his parents were totally obsessed. 

The sweet, Lifetime shit novelty of having parents he liked around soured right around when they started getting on JJ about school again because of finals. And they were right there, all the fucking time, around every corner.

Come home: “JJ where is your backpack. How do you not have your backpack?”

Try to watch TV: “I haven’t seen you do a minute of homework.” 

Kindly notify them you’re going to your cousin’s house: “Have him here, and sit there and make him quiz you for English.” 

Literally, just walk in any room: “Have you started studying yet?” 

His first mistake was coming downstairs, right in the line of fire, instead of out the window. Sure it was icy but he could handle it. Less handlable was Heyward coming to the stairs with a bowl of cereal before JJ was even halfway down and singing, “Whoa, early riser! Coming to study with your pal Heyward?” 

“Nah,” JJ said, walking down slowly. “I was actually gonna just go see what Kie’s up to.” 

“And when will you study?”

“Later?” 

“Later at two AM when we get back from the club?” 

“Yes?” 

“Nope. Go back. Get your books, eat, then study.” 

Legit, Heward wouldn’t touch him if he just dipped right now, JJ had done it a billion times since he got here. They wouldn’t even start blowing up his phone for a while and being grounded was way less awful than he’d been led to believe this entire time--like honestly the way other kids cried about being grounded JJ assumed it was code for something with sharp objects--but anyway he wasn’t going to dip because the triad had big non-parent-friendly plans tomorrow and sometimes you have to pay the toll. 

JJ stopped on the second to last step. “How long do I have to?” 

“Show me what you have then we’ll decide, sound fun?” 

Totally evil. 

JJ took his time getting peanut butter in each grid of his waffle and getting the exact right coffee to cream ratio, and also it was totally his turn to do dishes until Heyward came back and just sat down at the table and waited for JJ to sit down too. 

“You’re going to hold my hand?” 

Heyward laughed shortly. “If I have to, if it’s that kinda day.” 

Sometimes JJ really hated them.

You think Dad was walking around asking if JJ did homework? Before John B tied JJ to the rest of the world, Dad got in trouble for not sending him to the first month of second grade because he just plain didn’t give a shit. Honestly, Dad was a perfect parent for someone like him. JJ didn’t care about school, and Dad cared even less. 

Pope’s parents cared _so damn much._

“Doing well in school is going to get you off this island,” Heyward said on one of his first nights home, “It’s your ticket out, you have to take it seriously.” 

Careful, still unsure of what trouble looked like, JJ said, “I don’t want to get off this island. I just got back.” 

“Eventually. So you can do the things you want to, eventually.” 

Thank fucking God no one asked what that was, because short of being disgustingly rich and surfing all day every day and being around cool people always, he didn’t have a very specific plan. Like, not so specific as being a coroner. 

The Heywards liked specific. 

“Your assignment book up to date?” 

“Nope.” 

Heyward nodded. “Good we made copies for your syllabi, huh?” 

“So good.” 

Heyward decided JJ could do whatever the fuck he wanted once he finished a review packet for English, and filled out a worksheet about Israel for World History. 

“You’re just screwing yourself over,” JJ pointed out, “if you’d given me math or shop we’d be out in ten seconds.” 

“Huh,” Heyward said, “wonder why I chose these to do together, do you think?”

  
  


* * *

  
  


For way too long, it was the shock of the century that JJ was dumb. First, Ms. Heyward brought him to school to update his address or whatever, and she saw his schedule started tripping. The sick, embarrassment that slowly poisoned him while he stood next to Ms. Heywrad felt lethal for days after.

“What does ‘Enhanced’ mean? It's on some of your classes” she asked him. 

“Uh, I don’t know.” 

“It’s special ed,” the nosy fucking receptionist shoved in. 

Ms. Heyward flicked a quick look at him, then looked at the nosy bitch. “I’m not familiar with JJ’s classes. I want to talk to someone in the Special Education department, by Friday.”

Which started the super fun journey of three people telling Ms. H that JJ was stupid right in front of him, and having to watch her slowly understand that she didn’t bring a secret genius into her home. She brought a goddamn binder home full papers saying of god-knows-what and spent all night going over it.

If you weren’t sure how to top the best summer ever, it was your new foster parent spending three hours reading about how stupid you are. 

Naturally, JJ stole the binder. 

JJ took it outside, and sat on the steps trying to read, a task made more impossible by the fading light, compounding the existing impossibility. He knew he had an "IEP" and figured that was what this was, he pieced together it went back to elementary school, and there were a lot of numbers but it wasn't enough to know what Ms. Heyward knew.

Pope could read it for him, but only on the level that Pope knew how to read. Pope wouldn’t be mean, but he wouldn’t be chill like Kie and he fucking would not be perfect like John B. 

If John B wasn’t probably dead this would be such an easy fix. JJ would roll by the Chateau and John B would kindly pretend JJ was just offering him light reading, read it out loud and they’d move on with their goddamn day. 

It wasn’t that JJ _couldn’t_ read. He fucking could. 

It was that reading for half an hour was more exhausting than twelve hours of mowing lawns, and by the time he was done, it was a crapshoot whether he’d read it right. 

Kie picked him up. It was close enough to dark that it was maybe past curfew but it didn’t matter. She waited after he got in the car and looked past him to the house. 

“Is Pope coming?” 

“Uh, maybe later. Can you move, though?” 

No questions asked, she started the car. “Okay, is someone after us? Where’s Pope?” she asked, voice calm. 

“Fuck. No. Just some school shit, that’s it.” 

“Fuck you JJ, calling me to come over right away like the world is on fire?”

“I didn’t, I said it was no big deal!” 

“Well you have to be careful, life isn’t chill right now, okay?” 

“Yeah,” JJ agreed. Kie pulled into their usual spot behind Heyward’s shop. 

Kie turned off the engine and flipped on the inside car lights. “What’s up?” 

JJ handed her the binder, grinning stupidly. “I need glasses or some shit. Can’t read this worth a damn.” 

Kie accepted the binder. “Like you couldn’t read the compass?” 

“Yeah, just those two things.” 

She lifted the binder cover, read the first page then dropped it. “Okay, I love you, I’ll go along with a lot, but do you want me to read your special ed documents and pretend not to already know you have a learning disability?” 

“Oh is that what that is?”

She flipped the next page. “You’re so smart in so many ways, you know.” 

“Oh yeah, a binder full of smart.” Kie flipped through the pages crazy fast, like faster than most people read. “Are you reading it?” 

“It’s a lot of repetitive stuff, yeah. Want me to find anything specific?” 

“No, just the vibe.” 

Kie read, flipping some pages almost the second she came to them, and taking impossibly long on others. She never gave him a side look or changed her expression, it was like she was reading a book. Eventually, she flipped entire sections, then finally she nodded and closed the book. “Okay, general vibe? You get sent to the principal’s office a lot. Like, a lot. Like they have this sassy little section where they say, “John Jacob was sent to the office 62 times this year. The average student is sent zero times.” 

JJ grinned. “That’s kind of impressive.” 

Kie raised her eyebrows and nodded sarcastically. “So impressive! Other vibes, you’re good at math and anything kinetic or spatial which means--” 

“But bad at reading.” 

“Yeah, uh, you’re at 27% proficiency which--well you’re good at math so I won’t explain that. I think they think you have ADHD and dyslexia but they don’t say that. Holy shit, so many sassy comments about you not sitting still.”

“Again, impressive.” So fucking cool, awesome, exactly what he wanted Ms. Heyward to read about him all at once. “Is the general vibe that I suck?”

Kie thought a minute, and JJ legitimately loved her so much for it. “Um, well it’s pretty much about the problems you have? Like, this binder exists to be about problems, but I know you really well and a lot of this was new information and none of it was like, horrifying. And if people who like, went to the mainland to drag you out of foster care did so thinking that you are someone you aren’t, then that’s their problem and _they_ suck?”

“Oooh, look at you Kie, Dora the Explorer, figuring it all out,” JJ said, taking the binder back. 

“Nice, thank you so much JJ, love that. You could have asked one of them for help, you know? It’s way less tiring than pretending everything’s okay.” 

But that was August and JJ didn’t know a lot of things in August that he did in December, so that was clearly bullshit, and he changed the subject multiple times to get back to Pope’s house to pick Pope up to do something fun. 

Later, Ms. Heyward offered to go over the binder with him, and August JJ didn’t know what to do with that. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


In December though, when Heyward sat next to him trying not to fall back asleep, JJ knew that it would be more tiring if he pretended that the English review packet wasn’t vacuuming the soul out of his body. 

He dropped his book on the table and Heyward startled awake. “I need you to read a paragraph for me,” JJ said. 

“Did you try reading it out loud?” Heyward asked. 

“Yes,” JJ said, “didn’t you hear me? For like, twenty minutes. Do you want to sit next to me all day? I’ll struggle through, H, I really will. You’ve taught me so much about mettle and if you don’t want to read these passages of To Kill a Mockingbird out loud for your beloved foster son, I will sit here, learning disabled and all, and I will read until I’m a pile of sand.” 

Heyward raised his eyebrows and waited, then said, “You done?” and took his book. 

The hard part, that JJ didn’t expect, wasn’t knowing them knowing that JJ had a special ed brain. It was that Pope’s parents always had a genius kid and now they had JJ. Ms. H sitting next to him while he stared at a worksheet that would have taken Pope twenty seconds and her quietly saying, "JJ, do understand _any_ of this?" in total disbelief, was so fucking garbage that JJ was pretty sure running away was a better option, which he went ahead and tried, briefly, which was another story. 

It was also another story that it became clear that the parents quickly expected totally different things from Pope and JJ. Finishing an assignment was a victory for JJ. Finishing it perfectly was the only victory for Pope. For a while, there were lots of fights about that and it was rough but they sort of figured it out. If JJ wanted to go to medical school on full scholarship they'd expect different things than if Pope wanted to just not get in legal trouble and learn enough to work in a not-awful job. So that was part of it. 

Part of it though, was that there was a world of work everyone else in the family had to do survive as Black people in North Carolina that JJ had no idea about before. For Pope school was always part of that. And it sucked. That was like, a million other stories.

(And Jesus Christ, what business did JJ have coasting on white privilege? He could at least try, not waste his parents' time.)

For now, this story was that homework babysitting with Heyward was familiar but annoying, but always temporary. Ms. H would sit for hours. He could tire Heyward out in one. Eventually English did murder JJ’s soul, so he started walking around the kitchen and trying to get Heyward to talk about his last run so Heyward announced it was time for a break so JJ tried to leave which didn’t work so he said Kie was coming over to study too and that did work. 

Kie came at the same time Pope decided to take a break. She brought the firecrackers for tomorrow hidden in a sweatshirt and ran them upstairs while Pope got things set up for grilled cheese. 

“How’s the pointedly anxious studying going?” JJ asked. 

“Six pages down. Sound like you were with Dad, how’d that go?” 

“So great, exactly the same.”

Pope laid out bread for three sandwiches. “I don’t know what I need to write essays about Charles Dickens for if I want to be a coroner. I’m so jealous of the tech track man, I wish I was doing relevant stuff.”

“Dude, if Kildare had a class on poking at dead bodies I would so sign up.” 

Kie stomped down the steps then jumped down the last few. In the background, Heyward swore loudly. 

“It wasn’t me!” JJ yelled. Kie walked in, wearing the sweatshirt that was hiding the roman candles. “Did you see my baby up there? Isn’t she beautiful?” 

“Oh, hell yeah, best bedside table I’ve ever seen. So much better for your room.”

“We’re a family of high achievers,” Pope bragged. 

* * *

Everyone was still way more uptight about finals than they needed to be until it was over, at least where JJ was concerned. He tried to ride with what Pope had going, like when he kinda flipped over his chem final so they stayed up all night studying until JJ was pretty sure _he_ could have passed. When it started getting light and they had barely an hour before wake up, Pope crawled into bed. 

“You’re gonna win the test,” JJ said, yawning as he got in bed, “Chapel Hill is gonna beg for you.”

“It’s just one test, I have to ace a hundred more.” 

“That’s a lot, just to cut up bodies? You can become a serial killer and do it for free.” Pope didn’t answer. “I’m kidding. You can totally do it.”

“I know. I’m gonna do it.” 

Grades came in days before Christmas, a sadistic Kildare High practice. They came it at exactly 11:07 PM and JJ found out from Pope shaking him awake and dragging him downstairs. Their parents were already up and turned off the TV together around Pope’s laptop. 

Pope leaned over and waited for the school website to load. They were standing on the other side, so only Pope could see it. “It’s gonna be okay, it’s gonna be okay,” he whispered. Then it was clear the grades came through, for a minute he froze, then slowly smiled. “Seven A’s. I got seven A’s.” 

The parents screamed and rushed to hug Pope because it was the best thing _ever._ Literally, short of the Royal Merchant search, no one had ever worked as hard at anything as Pope did. Ms. H revealed that there was ice cream just for this moment, then Heyward said, “Hold on, we gotta check on JJ’s so we don’t do this twice.” 

JJ wasn’t even that caught up, he just said, “It’s not gonna be seven A’s though. It’s gonna be six D’s, it always is.” 

“It’s all about growing, baby, we’d be proud of five D’s and a C,” Ms. Heyward said. 

JJ laughed, “That’s so sad. Man. I would be too.” 

It was actually four C’s and two motherfucking _B’s._

Because they were a family of high goddamn achievers.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean, you know we were gonna get to the "JJ has a learning disability" fanon, and why not throw in the enormous pressure Pope is under. 
> 
> Chapter title from High Hawk Season by the Mountain Goats
> 
> I'd love if you commented!


	7. Some things you'll do for money and some you'll do for fun, but the things you do for love are gonna come back to you one by one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> JJ had to be careful, because once he loved someone, he was liable to set the world on fire to keep them safe. Or just to keep them.

March 2nd. 

That’s the day that he is supposed to sit in a room with Heyward waiting for his old dude cell phone to ring, then JJ will talk to his Dad for an hour. 

Kind of stupid. If DCS wanted to replicate his parental experiences, the phone call would last three minutes max. It was hilarious, actually, imagining what would happen if he and Dad managed to talk to each other for an hour. 

JJ found out about March 2nd on February 11th so there was lots of time to think about it. Not that he did.

Valentine’s day was three days later, and they had lots of triad shit to do. JJ made the executive decision to push off telling them about it until they were done celebrating, because it wasn’t even a big deal. 

“To be clear, I’m not planning our Valentine’s day celebration,” Kiara said at the beginning of the month. 

“But you’re so good at planning,” JJ said. 

“And I’m sick of it. Your turn, you plan Valentine's day.” 

“It’s just gonna be smoking up and chilling,” Pope said.

“We love smoking and chilling,” Kie pointed out. 

“That’s true,” Pope allowed, “Alright, I’ll mark my calendar for a JJ Maybank Valentine’s Day.” 

So he did. All winter their lives became focused on his and Pope’s house and bedroom. Kiara’s parents liked them a lot less now (due to a different story) and for at least a month it was the only place they’d hung out. 

He figured the best way to celebrate was a change of scenery. 

Their house was almost a mile from water, with neighbors they could hear fighting and singing. Sometimes they blocked off the road to have potlucks in the street. It was cool to have other people around, but every time he or Pope went in the front door, Ms. Hernandez shouted “friendly” questions from her porch and that wasn’t always chill, neither was Mr. Johanson telling their parents they were smoking in the backyard. 

So.

Change of scene. 

There was a stretch of land on the shore off the woods between Dad and John B’s houses where the land was solid and dry enough for a fire. It had logs to sit on and cover from the trees. It was the kind of place they would have happened upon and maybe spent days at before last summer, back when no risk was too big, and no schedule was worth keeping. JJ didn’t know if it was growing up, or the “trauma” his caseworker just loved talking about, but sometimes it just felt better to have a plan and not just wait to get in trouble. 

That didn’t mean he paid for a single one of the Hostess snacks he walked out of K’s Convenience with, or the wine in his backpack. 

In true Cut fashion, they all were booked working Kook parties and reservations on Valentine's night, so Kie picked him and Pope up at eight in the morning. JJ climbed in the backseat, and Pope leaned over to kiss Kie before she started the car again. She reached back and squeezed JJ’s hand. 

“Drive to my house,” JJ said. Kie pointed to the house next to them. “My dad’s house. No one’s there, it’s the closest road to where we’re going.” 

It was still the heavy wet kind of cold, but they had good jackets and shoes, and spent the walk through the woods arguing about what the real lyrics to the last song on the radio. When they got to the clearing, JJ revealed the plan: A fire, a smoke, some snacks and some wine. 

“And privacy,” JJ said.

Pope got to work on the fire, and Kie grabbed his backpack and took out snacks. “Oh!” she said, delighted. “You got Tropical Skittles. I’ve been looking all over for these.” 

“Yeah, I found out Yaya bought them all, so I traded her for them.”

“Black market shit,” Kie said appreciatively, she kissed his cheek. “What’d you trade for?” 

“Just a gram. No big deal.” 

“Holy shit,” Kie said, “you love me so much.” 

They decided eleven was an appropriate time to break into the pink wine, and literally break into it because getting wine was a romantic idea, made less wonderful by the discovery that he hadn’t taken a twist-off. 

Pope googled how to open the bottle which lead to JJ taking off one of his boots so he could put the bottle in it and wack it on a tree trunk until the cork popped out. He held his hand out and Pope mistakenly held out the wine, but JJ took his boot. 

“Once again, JJ loves us,” Pope joked, “letting me touch your boots, major trust.” 

Pope was saying it like a joke, like it wasn't the most legitimate sign that JJ loved Pope and Kie more than he had ever loved in his life. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


Ms. Heyward told JJ she loved him within twenty minutes of him moving in. Actually, she’d said she loved him a long time ago, before he was even a pretend part of this family. Ms. H gave “love you” out like she had the world’s biggest supply. 

One time JJ went with her to pick up pizza from Nero’s and when the limp haired cashier handed her change, Ms. H said, “Thank you, honey, have a good day, love you,” and walked out without another thought. The cashier looked after Ms. H liked it was the first time she’d heard it. JJ was pretty sure Ms. H told half the people on the cut that they were loved for the first time in their lives. 

Not JJ. His first parents said they loved him. But it was still nice to be around. 

JJ didn’t have nightmares, strictly speaking, because nightmares had stories that you could cry about, and JJ just sometimes woke up terrified and sweaty. It was probably a brain thing, because it didn’t start until after his concussion. When it happened, the best thing to do was go downstairs and sit in the light for a while, then try to sleep again. 

A week he found out about March 2nd, he woke up certain he was about to die. He switched awake, frozen and immediately cold from sweat and the blanket he’d kicked off. Next to him, Pope was snoring, reassuringly solid. JJ poked Pope, hoping he’d just wake up. Their bedroom was always half-lit by a street light, but it was still too dark. After waiting a minute for Pope to wake up for him, JJ sighed and carefully climbed around him to get out of bed and get some light. Halfway down the stairs, he saw Ms. H through the door to the front room, sitting on the couch, smoking a cigarette. He stopped, but she saw him too. “Come down, honey.” 

He was quiet down the last few steps. “Sorry,” he said. He wasn’t sure why Ms. H was awake, she’d worked a morning shift at the hotel and had a double tomorrow too, Kooks were still coming in for Valentine's, the restaurant was busy too. She needed to be sleeping. She didn’t smoke in the house that much. Maybe she was really mad. Maybe she was getting ready to leave. He came to sit next to her on the couch, to get a closer look. 

Ms. H absentmindedly put a hand on his shoulder, but she was focused on finishing her cigarette. She didn’t look angry, definitely not angry enough to leave. She just looked tired. 

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Are you sick?” 

Ms. Heyward ashed in an ashtray balanced on the armrest. It was a clay one Pope said he made when he was little, it was usually in a drawer in the kitchen. “No,” she said, “Sometimes my thoughts go too far, I need some time to get them in order.” 

“Like Pope,” JJ realized. Ms. H nodded and finished her cigarette. “But you don’t get all spun up like he does.” Normally right here Ms. H would say something nice and educational, but she just nodded and put the ashtray on the table. The sick, shaky feeling he’d woken up with wasn’t nearly gone. She rubbed her eyes. “I can leave you alone. Or make you a drink, or something.” 

“Oh no,” she said. “I just need time. What brings you down in the middle of the night? You’re not sneaking out barefoot in PJs.” 

“I’m just not feeling well.” In Pope’s family, you were only sick if you’d die during the seven hours you’d be at school, but it was better than the truth. Ms. Heyward brushed her hand over his forehead, and he became conscious of how sweaty he was. She did too, she frowned and felt around his head and neck. 

“Maybe you had a quick fever that broke,” she said. 

“Maybe.”

“Maybe you had a nightmare.” 

“...maybe.” 

Like he was ten years younger than sixteen, Ms. H shifted her hand to gently pull him close to her, and like JJ was ten years younger than sixteen, he too eagerly went along with it. Face warm, JJ dared to shift so he was leaning on her, maybe he scooted down a little.

“My mom used to make Coke slushies when I was sick,” he said without thinking. 

“What’s that?” 

“She’d crush up ice and mix the Coke in real fast. You have to drink it right away, or it’s just watery Coke.” He paused. “I guess you shouldn’t give sick kids Coke.” 

“You're not worse for it. I knew your mom, you know, when I was younger.” 

JJ did know that. He’d known for a long time, but they hadn’t talked about it. He fought between wanting to sit up and see her face while she talked about his mom, and not wanting to give up on how safe he felt here. “How?” 

“We were around the same age, she’s a few years younger than me. Went to Kildare together, we were even in the Sci-Fi Bookclub together.” 

JJ’s mind rapidly pieced together images of Mom, with her long tangly blonde hair, and beaded tie-dye t-shirts stitched with imagining her sitting still reading a book with anyone. Mom sitting still at all was a hard image. “Did she read the books?” 

“She was the president of the club! She was the one who wrote letters to politicians and celebrities to get them to send us books. She got us twenty copies of _The Martian Chronicles_ and there were only four of us in the club.” 

“Really?” 

“Really. Everyone knew Lulu Campbell, if she wasn’t so beautiful she would have been a geek, always getting in trouble for stealing from the library. Some things are genetic, I suppose.” 

Some weren’t. JJ could steal any book he touched, but he couldn’t read them. It was a nice story, why did it feel so bad?

“Was she smart?” 

“She knew how to get what she wanted, that’s for sure.”

This house was full of books. They were slotted in every corner of their bedroom, and there were six bookshelves all together. Hell, there were even books in the bathroom, neatly stacked on the medicine cabinet. Heyward ruined a good Tuesday showing JJ where some kids' books were stored to suggest JJ practice on them, which was fucking insulting, but he still spent some time looking them over. He hadn’t seen books for kids before, with their big text and pictures right there in the book. Just because being offered kids books was insulting didn’t mean he didn’t take some now and then, though. _Ziggy and the Black Dinosaurs_ was the shit. 

“We didn’t have any books in my house,” he said. “None.” 

“Well, I think the books belonged to the school.” He shifted, irrationally hurt that Ms. Heyward didn’t understand, but quickly she said, “Things change for everyone when they grow up. I thought I’d have ten children and work for the president.” 

“The president?” 

“Well, not _this_ president. Thought I’d go to college, hell I still might. I just trust in God that things turn out the way they’re supposed to.”

“Really? I don’t think my mom was supposed to smoke meth.” 

Ms. Heyward didn’t have anything to say. He could feel that she was still spun up.

JJ wasn’t totally sure of the timeline, or the reasons beyond him allegedly being a terrible child, but Mom was in and out until she stayed out. He knew now she was on meth some of the time she was home. That’s why she was jumping around and starting fires and shit, but she wasn’t always. Sometimes she was there when he got out of school, and they’d stay at the beach until dark singing old folk songs. 

But then she was gone, and she stayed gone. 

“Maybe she’s somewhere reading,” JJ suggested, “Or, maybe she has a book club in prison or something.” 

“We know from DCS she’s not in prison,” Ms. H said, “Let’s say she has a book club somewhere nice. Let’s say Phoenix.”

He suddenly felt self-conscious, but still didn’t move. “I bet you didn’t look at her and think, ‘I hope in twenty years--what was her name?”

“Lulu Campbell.” 

_Lulu Campbell_

“I hope in twenty years Lulu Campbell messes up so bad I’m stuck with her kid.”

He held his breath during the ten-year pause before Ms. H said, “Remember I said back then I thought I’d have ten kids? I’ve always been happy with Pope, but we had a feeling we’d have another kid, someway, somehow even now he’s almost grown. Now we do. Didn't know it'd be white Lulu's kid too, but I knew you then in some way, just like your mom did.” 

Ms. Heyward gave “I love you’s” away like she had an unlimited supply, but JJ couldn’t. He had to be careful because once he loved someone, he was liable to set the world on fire to keep them safe. 

Or just to keep them. 

“I love you, Ms. H,” he said, sitting up. 

“I love you too, sweetheart,” she said, even easier than she said it to the Nero’s cashier. “Let’s both try to get some sleep, okay?” 

* * *

JJ’s parents loved him. 

His first ones. 

Mom taught him how to swim. 

Dad taught him how to survive a wreck. 

They didn’t let him know always, but they did. You didn’t have to tell someone all the time just to know it was true. 

JJ called Heyward from school to bring him his posterboard for World History the day after Corrine came over and went over all the crap they had to do if Dad came by unannounced or tried to kidnap him or something. Life fucking sucked then, and forgetting his poster board was just fucking typical. By the time he realized it, World History was too soon for JJ to leave and get it on his own, and he didn’t learn how to say Mesopotamia for nothing. But he’d been kind of an asshole at home, so it wasn’t a surprise when Heyward said no. 

“I’m gonna fail though,” JJ said.

“You’re going to fail?” Heyward asked, not mockingly, the way he asked questions like he thought he’d get a different answer.

“I’ll present tomorrow for a worse grade,” JJ corrected, annoyed that he knew that, annoyed that he was now the kind of person who hid in the bathroom to call home for the posterboard he worked on so he’d get a _better grade_. Fuck.

“Nope,” Heyward said, “This is a lesson.” 

“I’m sick of your lessons,” JJ snapped.

Heyward laughed. “JJ, I love you. I’m hanging up, I’ll see you tonight.” 

JJ’s annoyance evaporated and was replaced with alarm. Confusion. Something else. 

_“JJ, I love you. I’m hanging up, I’ll see you tonight.”_

He hadn’t heard wrong, because that wouldn’t be wrong, because Heyward did love him. It wasn’t surprising or confusing, after a few seconds. Heyward did all the same things he did with him that he did with Pope--the yelling and telling him he could do better, the picking up the candy JJ liked but couldn’t get here when he went to the mainland, the listening, always listening. It wasn’t out of the left field.

Heyward hadn’t made a mistake. JJ just needed more information. He needed to get it soon, not too soon so he seemed clingy cause no one liked that, but not too late that Heyward forgot. His chance came a few days later when he accidentally woke up way early and came downstairs to watch TV with him

“What would make you not love me anymore?” JJ asked Heyward, after spending an entire episode gathering courage. 

Heyward picked up the remote and turned off the TV and gave him an exhausted look.

“What did you do?”

“That’s a trick.” Heyward did not look happy with that answer. “I didn’t do anything, I’m just asking. Like, there’s a limit, so I want to know what it is.” 

Heyward thought for a minute. “If you turned out hateful. Wouldn’t visit you in prison, wouldn’t invite you ‘round for Christmas.” 

“Hateful? The fuck, H?”

“Yep. Hurt people for the hell of it, Didn’t help your community, made it worse, and you did it on purpose.” 

“That’s so non-specific,” JJ said, “That means you could just be done with me, any minute.” 

“No, it don’t,” Heyward said, “You stole my boat, brought the police to my house, lie constantly, and just about a thousand other things I’ll think of later--and here we are. Hell, just about anything short of a violent hate crime, you’d still have a place here. That’s not a dare--shit if you take this as a dare goddamn it. JJ don’t you dare try and find out what I consider hateful, I explained it pretty clear, didn’t I? That don’t mean you settle one notch above nazi.” 

“Yeah,” JJ agreed, feeling warm and tired. Heyward nodded and turned the TV back on. They’d been watching more dumb cooking shows, and JJ waited until Guy Fieri was done talking to someone making catfish before saying, “What if I had to kill someone in self-defense? What then?” 

“You go on and kill someone, and I’ll let you know.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


March 2nd came. JJ hadn’t thought a lot about it, didn’t track his days backward until he got here, and didn’t casually bring it up so often that Pope said, “JJ, it’s fine, but if you didn’t care you wouldn’t want to talk about it multiple times a day.” 

Dad was twenty-seven minutes late calling, which was enough time for JJ to go through the five stages of grief and call around for a ride to bring his board to the water. 

“It’s fine,” JJ said, putting his phone down. Heyward looked up from his book. Neither of them had gotten up from the table since five, Heyward’s phone sitting like a bomb between them. “It’s fine.” 

“It’s not fine,” Heyward said. 

“This just means you love me best,” JJ pointed out, “You win.” 

“It’s not a winning thing.” 

JJ grabbed his phone and stood up. “Whatever, don’t worry.” 

“JJ, sit the hell down. Do homework, and at six you can leave. You are grounded until six.” 

He ignored the hell out of that and went to the door to pick up his boots. “You can’t ground me, I didn’t do anything.” 

“You wanted contact, you have to do your part.” 

He leaned against the door and yanked his boots on. “What, is he performing surgery? I know he’s home. Thad told me he’s back in our house. He’s two miles away, probably freebasing and fucking erasing me from his brain. It’s cool, you know, I got the better deal.” 

“You think I’m gonna sit here--” Heyward’s phone chimed. JJ froze, balanced pulling his left boot on. Heyward reached for the phone and looked at the screen. “It’s Luke.” 

“Answer,” JJ demanded, dropping his boot and hurrying back to the table. He reached for the phone but Heyward didn’t hand it over. 

“Luke? Yeah, it’s Heyward. Yeah, doing fine. Yeah, better now they’re coming to town. No--” JJ waved his hand--fucking southern charm was going to eat up his hour. “--hey I got your kid here, he’s ready to talk. Okay.” 

Manners totally gone, JJ grabbed the phone and held it to his ear. Heyward gestured bluntly for him to sit down, and he did. “Dad?” 

“My boy,” Dad sang. 

It was like getting water after being out all day in the sun. 

“Hi Dad.” 

“Shit. Hey."

"How are you doing?"

"You know. Hey, you’re turning seventeen in a few weeks.” 

“Yeah,” JJ agreed, a little giddy. “Yeah, on the twenty-first.” 

“You get your license yet?” 

“Uh, I got it when I was with you.” 

“Right.” 

Dad wasn’t high, or if he was he wasn’t flying. It was rare, but his voice was clear, and he responded right away. It was clear enough that JJ could hear that Dad was a little stung by the reminder that JJ wasn’t with him this early in the conversation.

“But I’ve got some practicing in.” 

“That’s good, that’s good. Heyward spying on us?” 

He glanced over at Heyward who was reading his big history book. “Uh, I mean he’s just here. He can hear what I’m saying.” Heyward looked up right away, and JJ kind of shook his head like, _no, nothing wrong._

“Ditch him.” 

“He’ll just take the phone.” 

“Shit. Y’all really into rules over there, huh? Never dealt with DCS this much in our family, you know when your cousin went down she ran from that foster home and they didn’t even come looking.” 

Okay, JJ was young when that happened but Lena definitely wasn’t dealing with the same shit he was, and if Dad got to resent being reminded JJ wasn’t with him, he got to resent having to defend not wanting to get beat. “Yeah, my caseworker is kind of obsessed. And you’re on parole, you don’t wanna get sent back just cause I wanna hang out.” 

“Eh, it wasn’t so bad. You know I did a nickel before you were born, right? Same camp too.” 

“Yeah, on ‘trumped-up charges for taking a pack of gum.’”

“That’s right, that’s why I taught you to never take anything that wasn’t yours, no matter what.” 

JJ grinned. “Yeah, you taught me well. Anyone in there from the old days?” 

“Nah, even the lifers were gone. Six months in a country club is what it was. Prison just ain’t what it used to be.” 

“That’s good though, weren’t you supposed to be in there way longer?” 

“I was.”

Dad went quiet and JJ started getting nervous, like he should apologize. “Hey Dad, I--”

“Listen, I just wanna let you know. I don’t blame you.” 

JJ’s breath caught. “You don’t?” 

“Nah. I know my boy, I’ve been telling the family you ain’t snitch. I went a little far, I know that. We all know there’s a limit before other people get nosy, and I crossed it.” 

Earlier in the week, JJ went back to the brain doctor he saw on the mainland, because Pope told his parents about the headache JJ had where he couldn't see, and apparently it was a national tragedy. 

He had to do a bunch of stupid tests and answer a bunch of stupid questions when he literally could be doing anything else from surfing to cutting his own tongue out instead of being told he still had post-concussion syndrome which was so fucking dumb. Everyone had headaches, and he had been unable to focus on shit he didn’t care about his entire fucking life. 

“Do you know how many hits to the head I’ve taken?” JJ asked when the doctor started going on about how _serious_ it all was. “I’ve probably been concussed most of my life.” The doctor looked between him and Heyward coolly. “Not _him.”_

“If you’ve had multiple, untreated head traumas, that could explain why you’re still having symptoms seven months later. You need to be careful not to have any more head injuries. It would compound the damage.” 

_A little far._

All at once, it got really hard to stay here and be part of this fucking conversation, so he stopped. JJ felt himself go transparent, and he knew whatever was left would keep this going and keep him safe. 

“I didn’t mean for it to go down like this,” the rest of him said. 

“Hell, I know that. Look, you did some really stupid shit, one after the other, I lost it. Can you blame me? No. But we needed a break, right? I figured my shit out, you figured out yours. Heyward’s a damn tightass, I bet they have you saying please and thank you just for breathing.” 

“I guess.”

“They’re treating you good?” 

“Uh huh.” 

“Yeah. Feeding you and everything? Getting you stuff you need for school?”

“Yeah.”

“Not hurtin’ you none?” 

“Mmhm.“

“No?”

“No.” 

“You wanna come back with me though, huh?” 

“Yeah,” JJ said. 

“Thought so.” 

A second and a half later his brain caught up and everything in him seized up. He was so wired for this, without really being there JJ had been giving Dad the answers that would keep him calm, so automatically that he gave him a really fucking wrong answer. He looked across the table and something must have looked wild in his eyes because Heyward snapped to attention and reached for the phone. JJ leaned away from him. 

“I can’t. I’m supposed to be here.”

“What, Heyward?” 

“Yeah. It’s like a law.” 

“Fuck. DCS lady told me you ain’t even on probation anymore, it don’t matter where you are. They don’t care about you, ‘specially not Heyward.” 

Heyward was done reaching for the phone, but he looked like he was trying to listen in on the call. JJ wanted two things at once. He wanted to bail on this phone call, this whole thing, and get his best shit in a bag and leave, because he knew that Dad was at home and it wouldn’t even take a fucking hour to get there. He could go home, for real.

JJ also wanted to hand the phone over so he didn’t have to be the one to hang up, because Heyward would protect him. 

“Dad, I wanna be able to hang out with you,” he said. 

“Good. Come home.” 

“Yeah. What? No. Dad. It’s not a good idea.”

“‘Yeah, what, no.’ Fuck, maybe with me you’ll give up this retard shit. Learn to talk right.”

One hundred percent of JJ’s brain caught up. 

Right before waiting for this phone call, JJ spent about ten minutes acting out the plot holes in _Grand Plan, Grand Dam_ while Heyward listened until his eyes glazed over. 

“You’re bored,” JJ concluded. “Sorry.” 

“Yes,” Heyward agreed. “Don’t care about this, but you ain’t done, so keep telling me.” 

For a while at first, when talking to his parents JJ had been careful and quiet, or so loud and angry the only option was for them to yell back. It was the best combination, he’d figured that out years ago. 

Not too long in though, he happened on a secret third option, where he could ask questions that he didn’t already know the answer to, and he could tell them about shit at school, and he could ask how much longer the pasta should cook and it would be totally. fully. fine. 

He liked the third option. Even more than not getting hit, JJ liked not having to guess, fucking calculate all the goddamn time. 

“Dad, you asked. They feed me here, they get me stuff for school. And they don’t hurt me.”

Dad was quiet, so quiet JJ’s hand twitched to check if he’d hung up. “Shit,” he said, almost whispering but JJ still flinched at it. “It’s one thing for a bunch of government suits to tell me that. It’s another to hear if from your son.” 

Maybe Dad was just couldn’t be a father. Drugs fried the part of his brain that knew how to do it. It was that simple. It had nothing to do with JJ. It just wasn’t possible. 

“Just get your shit in order, Dad. Maybe we can be friends or something, but I can’t come back. It’s a bad scene for both of us.” 

“Shit."

"I'm sorry."

"You know I love you.” 

JJ took a deep breath. “I know. I love you too.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


John B was the first person JJ loved on purpose. He was the person who taught him that love wasn’t just built into survival to make it worth it, it was fun and energizing and it was a choice. That was another story. It was also all of these stories, or at least they depended on it. 

This story was that the conversation with Dad lasted six minutes, twice as long as JJ estimated, and when it was done, Heyward said he was no longer grounded, and offered to drive him to the beach.

“Do we tell your caseworker you want to do this again?” Heyward asked while they drove. 

JJ thought. “If we do, that means my dad is still technically my dad, and you can’t really be my parents right?” 

“It means you’re talking to your dad, and he’s always gonna be your dad, and we’re still your parents,” Heyward said. “That’s it.” 

The drive was short, and it wasn’t long enough for JJ to figure out how to tell Heyward he loved him too before getting out. 

If was fine, though. He’d have other chances. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Love, Love, Love by the Mountain Goats
> 
> Ziggy and the Black Dinosaurs is a children’s book series by Sharon M Draper that is also published as Clubhouse Mysteries. (It was Ziggy and the Black Dinosaurs first, and JJ would be reading the family’s first editions)
> 
> I'm surprised but thrilled that this slow burn, no action, no sex, fic almost exclusively focused on trauma recovery has this many eyes on it. If you have comments, please comment! I appreciate how generous many of you have been, it really motivates me to keep working.


	8. The last white slabs of snow melted off seven weeks ago

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> JJ turns seventeen. Lots of other stuff is going on. Mostly stuff that's been going on for a while.

One time, JJ got a corn snake for his birthday. His eleventh birthday. JJ named her Dr. Death. It was a fucking sick gift, even if it was from one of Dad’s fucking creepy smuggler friends who somehow knew it was his birthday when Dad didn’t. Creepy smuggler explained how it wouldn’t bite him, and how to feed it. JJ turned a plastic cake container into a tank and it was really cool but the best part was staying home from school and letting her crawl over his arms and whispering, “I love you, I love you, you dumb little snake.” How calm he felt. 

The problem was, he was supossed to get baby mice to feed her and how the fuck was he supossed to do that? Even the cake container wasn’t nearly enough for her. Dr. Death didn't deserve to go hungry because he couldn't take care of her. So he brought Dr. Death to live with John B because Big John definitely could get the right food and stuff. He even got Dr. Death the right tank. 

Not a whole lot later Dr. Death died and received a Viking funeral, but she still made JJ’s eleventh birthday the best one yet. 

JJ turned seventeen in the middle of the third wave of Spring Break Tourons. Heyward and Pope were working in the store nonstop, smiling wide and answering Northerners and landlocked idiots incredibly stupid questions about how to cook fish, and all of JJ’s jobs--unloading trucks before school, mowing lawns and bussing tables--were offering so many shifts that if people didn’t notice him ditching now, he could blow off school and clear a thousand bucks a week. 

As it was, the only job no one blinked at him working as much as possible at was the hotel, and that was just because Ms. H was there too, because she was the head boss of housekeeping and these days she practically lived there. When JJ got done, he’d go sit in her office and “do homework” until she came in and was always somehow surprised to see him and was like, “Oh shit. Okay, we better go home.” 

“Sweetie I’m sorry we don’t have anything going for your birthday this weekend,” she said while she drove them home. 

“I don’t care,” JJ said, “It’s really arbitrary, we could pull over and make a party right now about me being sixteen and whatever days old, we just choose not to. It’s fine, my birthday has never been a big deal.” 

“It must be hard, having a birthday right in the middle of Spring Break season.” 

JJ waited a minute to understand what that meant before connecting the dots that she thought that JJ’s birthday wasn’t a big deal before because of the reasons it wasn’t a big deal now. “Oh no,” he said, “my parents were too messed up to work with tourists. The time of year don’t matter at all, they just plain didn't give a shit. It just--” He stopped because Ms. Heyward was stopped at a stop sign for way too long, staring at him. “I could've just let you believe it’s because of the economy, huh?” 

“You could have. Though now I feel worse we’re not doing anything.” 

“Oh. Don’t. It’s not like I cry at night about it? Seriously, we’re all way too busy to do anything right now.” 

He went up to bed before anyone because he had Jamison’s in the morning and also was fucking tired, but he heard voices downstairs while he lay in bed on his phone. Eventually, Pope came up and right away started changing in pajamas to go right to bed. The Tourons brought money, but they stole any time that was left for just chilling and not taking care of biological functions between school and work. 

“Hey, I didn’t tell you this, but my parents are planning a surprise party for you this Saturday.” 

JJ really had to keep a store of stuff on this side of the bed to throw at Pope when he did stuff like this. “What? Say more right now.” 

“Yeah, so apparently there’s no end to the shocking ways you were abused and neglected and birthdays are one of them? Dude, that’s so fucked, you should have told me.” 

“Shut up. More about my party.” 

“Yeah, so you need to come home with Mom after work for sure, cause they’re going to invite Kie, and Thad, and they don’t think you have any other friends and honestly you don’t really, and I’m supposed to assess if you like Ezekiel’s family enough to invite them too.” 

Ms. H had a Good Family. She had a dad, and a stepmom (“But that’s a bit of a silly term, since I was twenty one when they got married”) and a way younger brother Ezekiel who was married to Gweneth and had Aster and Gemma who were the coolest kids ever, and she also had aunts and cousins too who JJ met a lot, and even though there kept being more people, the feeling was that these people always existed and were always the same. All the information was just there and there weren't surprise entrances or exits; it was the same month after month. 

A few times a month, JJ was told to go to Ezekiel’s house after work, or Ezekiel’s family was just in their house when he got home, and the only real theme or reason JJ could figure for the get-together was seeing each other. After one extremely long visit at Ezekiel's where the goodbye lasted longer than everything before it, they got home and JJ asked, "When do I meet your whole family, Heyward?" and everything stopped. 

People didn't freeze in this house, but JJ was practiced at it and immediately shut up when Pope stopped taking off his raincoat and Ms. Heyward halted in the doorway to the kitchen. 

"Sorry," he said quickly. 

Heyward was the only one who hadn't frozen. He was sitting in the chair by the door, unlacing his boots. "I think we have enough of these get-togethers, don't need to double up on them."

That night Pope stood in the doorway while JJ brushed his teeth. Pope had followed JJ downstairs to the bathroom because his parents were upstairs in bed. Pope was still whispering which meant this was a mega secret. "I met his mom once, when I was really little. I don’t even know where she lives. That's it. Never even been to a wedding on his side, I don't even know if he has brothers."

"Fuck. I mean, isn't there island lore about his family or something? It seems like your dad's been alive forever, that only comes with family."

"He's just way older than my mom, that's why it seems that way. We did a family tree thing--remember in third grade? And he told me his Mom’s name, but he wouldn’t answer any questions. I think his parents were like your parents."

That was October and even then JJ knew that to Pope, that meant Heyward was raised by monsters. 

He really didn’t need a lot of new information after that. JJ knew from Maybank family stories that were told like they were hilarious that Dad’s parents were like JJ’s parents. Dad had old cigarette burns down his arm in a perfect line, and when he got desperate, JJ reasoned that at least _that_ never happened to him. Maybe everything else in the family stories did, but that didn’t. One thing died off. 

Whatever happened to Heyward though, it _all_ died off. Even when he yelled--which he did a lot--it was rarely scary and nothing he said stuck for more than a night. Not that JJ thought about it a ton, but if turning out like Heyward was still an option, he’d take that. Heyward was part of a Good Family now, and so was JJ so maybe the odds were in his favor. 

“I guess they can come? I mean Ezekiel still doesn’t like me.” 

“He likes you fine, he almost isn’t convinced you’re going to get me killed with your white privilege idiocy. Just stop swearing around his kids, he’s still a fucking nerd,” Pope said, in uncharacteristic nerd dragging. “Say yes, because you like Aster and Gemma.” 

“Yes,” JJ agreed. “Did our parents say if anyone except Thad can come?” 

Any Maybank, he meant without saying it. As far as DCS was concerned, JJ wasn’t allowed to be alone with like half his family, including Thad’s dad Bart, but Heyward let it slide because he knew Bart just went down for some chill robbery and that was it. JJ wasn’t really supposed to hang out with other Maybanks though, because Heyward knew them too, but JJ did anyway, at least the ones who didn't hate him. He just did the right thing and didn’t ask for permission.

Except now that Dad was back. It wasn’t just that he full-on was not allowed to be in the same room as his dad, JJ didn’t want to. He was a fucking coward, but even sometimes going into town made him nervous, because what if he ran into Dad? It was easier to keep it just to the phone if JJ wasn’t at Maybank houses either. 

“Just Thad,” Pope said, pulling a t-shirt on. “Who else do you want? Matt? I know he’s your cousin, but Matt’s a piece of shit.” 

“Nah, it’s fine. Hey, maybe we can get John B to Facetime in or something?” 

“You mean our friend who is legally dead? Super idea.” 

“Fuck you. Why’d you ruin my surprise?” 

“Fuck you!” Pope jumped on the bed and shoved JJ over and turned out the light. “Cause you freak over surprises? Like, even very minor ones, like John B not telling you he had Twizzlers or some shit, you get way hyper then crash. I don’t know how our parents think this is a good idea. God, thank god you’re turning seventeen, you’ll come upon this wisdom that I’ve been sharing all the time on my own.” 

“Your birthday was literally five weeks ago.” 

“And I’ve been much wiser than you this entire time. Actually, I am always wiser than you.” 

“No you fucking aren’t, you know how many times I’ve stopped you from crashing a boat, or cutting your hand off or something?” 

Pope considered. “Different kind of wiser. You have to admit though, without me and Kie there’s a seriously high chance you’d be in jail right now.” 

“That’s not an age thing,” JJ said, “See? I’m wise enough to know that. Shut the fuck up and go to sleep.” 

  
  


* * *

  
  


There were lots of other stories.

It took a lot of editing to make _this_ be the story. JJ just liked this one best. 

Three meals a day, parents who weren’t terrifying, and an awesome triad could do a lot, but it couldn’t change that JJ was the kind of person who robbed a drug dealer to get payback.

JJ was still the kind of person who held guns to people’s heads. 

Like, he was cute and fun to talk to, no doubt. JJ knew that. But he also knew that for most of his life, he was always ten seconds from exploding and killing everything near him. The big difference was that now, he was thirty seconds away from exploding. 

Which was actually pretty helpful. Thirty seconds was a long time. 

He smoked weed for the first time when he was inarguably too young. Even with the fuckedupness of his childhood, JJ knew that. It was the kind of other story that didn’t get more description than being another story. 

But even without really understanding what was happening, right away, JJ knew he had to get more. For as long as he could remember, the world was loud and it felt like his brain was vibrating and he couldn’t catch his breath. JJ’s first high was like being other people, just for an hour. The more time JJ spent with normal people, like the Heywards and Kie, the more clear was that the way he felt was not normal, so why the fuck were they bugging him for using weed to get there. 

Anyway. 

The next night they ended up at a party. It was a Tuesday night, but everyone operated by different rules during the Spring Break rush, even Pogues, and without much discussion, the three of them accepted that they’d break curfew and it was worth it to have some fun. 

He was not high at the Pogue party that was going too far real fast. Yaya’s house was in a neighborhood like theirs, so going at all was risky and especially when some idiots started fighting out front. Everything was off, people kept bumping into him while the party filled, and he grabbed Kie and found a spot in the kitchen until things calmed down and they could find Pope. 

“Awesome,” Kie said, “this is so fun, I’m totally going to look back and think I was so cool in high school.” 

“ _Hey_ ,” Aiden appeared mega drunk already and coming up close. “Oh shit, now I know it’s a good party? I thought you were too good for us.” 

“What are you talking about?” Kie asked, managing to sigh the entire time the was talking. 

Aiden held up his hands to frame them squinting. “We’ve got the Slumming Kook Princess and JJ Lite. Diet JJ. All the bark, but where’s the bite?” Aiden laughed stupidly at his joke. 

“I literally went to middle school with you,” Kie said. “Aiden you’re such a dumbass.”

JJ didn’t say anything, he was trying to put off the thirty-second countdown. 

Seconds after a commotion outside the house started, Pope burst into the kitchen, with scared eyes. “The cops are gonna get called any minute, we have to go.” 

JJ handed Kie the beer they were sharing and she downed it, then handed it back to him. She dropped the flip flops she was holding on the floor and put them on. Before, JJ would have given Pope such a hard time for bailing before the police were even in hearing distance. But now he knew how the family froze when a police siren went down their block, how Ms. K’s eyes followed Pope in the convenience store because he was Black. Even though JJ--who she’d caught stealing four times--was right there. And he knew how fucked up it was that JJ and John B always teased Pope and Kiara for being desperate to avoid trouble. 

(“Jesus fuck I’ve been so fucking racist,” JJ said once, “why would you have let me live here?” “You’re actually way better than when we first met,” Pope said and JJ went, “Jesus,” and Pope said, “Look you’re getting better. Just keep listening to us.”)

So JJ listened and picked his backpack up off the counter so they could leave. “What the fuck?” Aiden laughed. “Oh, I get it. Diet JJ ‘cause you’re Heyward’s bitch now.” 

“Shut up,” JJ said, unable to keep himself from stopping where he stood, even as Pope pulled on his elbow to leave. He gripped the empty beer bottle in his hard so hard he might crush it. 

“Relax, JJ,” Aiden said, grinning wide, “There’s nothing to defend.” 

“We have to go _right now,_ ” Kie said, stepping around JJ to push him from behind. 

“Listen to your mommy Gaybank.”

Pope and Kie dragged him out through the side door, and they got down the street before the flimsy soap bubble around JJ’s fury popped. With a scream, he smashed the beer bottle on the street. He shoved off the hands that reached him and screamed again. It was like tearing demons out of his body, but the second they left they rushed back in. 

Pope grabbed him by the shoulders and pressed a hand over his mouth. JJ struggled, pushing harder than he needed to go get Pope off him. "JJ you're going to _kill us._ "

JJ wasn't going to touch them. He wasn't going to hurt them why the fuck would they say that. His entire body was vibrating, it felt like even his eyes were failing. In the background, he heard sirens, but he didn't register them as clearly as Kie grabbing his face. 

"If you don't move right now we have to leave you."

And that did it, panic in his brain at being left activated the better part of his brain that remembered cops were much more dangerous than whatever fire was inside him and he needed to not let his white privilege idiocy his favorite people killed. He nodded and let Kie hold onto his elbow while they ran to her car. 

They got home minutes before curfew, but late enough that Kie went outside to wait for the signal to climb through their window instead of coming in, because if either parent was home they’d tell her to turn right around. Only Heyward’s truck was out front, and JJ stood outside their bedroom door until he heard snoring. Once that was confirmed, he went directly to their room, to the place behind their dresser where he hid his weed and propped open the window over their bed to smoke out of. 

“Seriously?” Kie asked, looking up from where she was pulling out a shirt to wear to bed. 

“What? You want some?” JJ asked, holding out the already rolled joint. 

“You know Mr. Johansen is just going to tell our parents,” Pope said. 

“That is one hundred percent tomorrow’s problem.” 

He got the vibe that Pope and Kie weren't psyched with who he was as a person right now, and that vibe got stronger when JJ finished of the--fucking _tiny_ \--joint and went for another. 

"Jesus Christ, JJ. Are you trying to ruin your brain?" Kie asked.

"What? Leave me alone. I’m trying to get a good vibe going, fuck.” 

“Oh, it’s working real well,” Kie drawled. JJ flicked the remnants of the roach out the window, and tumbled gracefully off the bed. He’d only taken his boots off to get in bed, but it was time to put them back on. “Literally where are you going?” 

“Downstairs,” JJ said. “I’m gonna enjoy this high while it lasts with a fucking waffle and the Food Network. Don’t come if you’re bringing this fucking energy.” 

  
  


* * *

  
  


He woke up on the couch and was glad Kie was still upstairs in the morning. Even if she was in his spot. JJ climbed over Pope’s study corner at the end of the bed and shoved in behind her. Based on the groaning, it woke everyone up. 

“Sorry,” he said. 

“Fuck you so much JJ,” Kie said, waking up. 

“I mean, sorry about last night too.” 

“It’s so exhausting to be you,” she said, exactly what he said to Pope all the time, “you know people like Aiden just say shit because you lose it so easily.” 

“I live to entertain.” Kie didn’t laugh. “I’ll meditate more?” 

“How ‘bout you shut the fuck up so we can sleep,” Pope interrupted. 

That at least, he could do. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


Since Dad didn't try to murder JJ over the phone, and generally hadn’t done anything super shitty since leaving jail, Corrine said JJ could talk to him on the phone for an hour once a week. A parent had to be there to watch for “distress” and “safety plan” if there was a “threat” but mostly it was mad inconvenient. After a once week delay, JJ talked to dad one more time (Mainly about the repairs Uncle Simon was doing on this house) and he was supossed to talk to Dad one more time before his birthday. It was a real bitch finding a time JJ and one of the parents weren’t working, within the hours JJ suggested would be best for Dad. Dad said, “whenever” but he was less likely to be high early in the morning, or after he’d passed out a couple hours in the afternoon and neither was convenient. 

On Thursday Ms. Heyward gave her shift to her like, underling, and convinced Nathan to let JJ start work late. It meant a lot less money was coming home at the end of the night, but Ms. H said, “You don’t eat $600 in waffles each month, this is part of what the money is for.” 

Dad didn’t say anything because he didn’t call. It was real sweet of him. Not like JJ had a life or Ms. H had a life and wasting her time was any way to thank her for raising his son. 

“Can you not--” He knew Ms. H was supposed to tell his caseworker about Dad fucking off, but Corrine made it sound like the calls were a test, like if he and Dad did them right enough they could see each other, even if it was in a depressing DCS office. He had no idea why he wanted that.

“What do you need baby?” 

Why was JJ _like this?_

For years, he had so many tricks. Rapid-fire explanations for why what was happening to him was normal and okay. Families on TV were fake, his friends were lying about what happened at home like he was, JJ was weak or exaggerating, and when all those ran out, JJ could fall back on the truth the he was just _bad_ and that’s why. It explained everything. 

But the Heywards weren’t fake, and JJ had wowed them with a lot of bad but they fucking loved him and Heyward picked him up when his head hurt too much to be at school and Ms. H was here how and they were cleaning _Dad’s fucking messes_ and 

God, he was such an ungrateful bastard. It was so fucking obvious that the right thing would have been to have fucking killed Dad last summer when he could, but since he didn’t fucking do that, the least he could do was stop pining like a baby. How many fucking epiphanies did he have to have before he could just make a clean break and move the fuck on? 

“He remembered about my birthday,” JJ said. 

“I know he did.” 

“Maybe if we invited him to the party?”

“What party? If there was a party, you know damn well why we can’t do that.” 

“Maybe he just feels bad he can’t be part of my life.” 

“I’d feel bad too, you’re a great kid. It’s not our doing though, yours or mine, and these calls are how he gets that. He has a few more minutes to call, lets hope he does.” 

  
  


* * *

  
  


Sometimes JJ still got a thirty seconds warning, but he had no fucking idea why he was angry. Like how when he and Ms. H got back to the hotel, there were enough busboys so he got stuck on dishes which wasn’t even that bad because he could listen to music so it didn’t make sense that when someone dropped off a tub of dirties, the sight of them was so infuriating that without waiting, he took them out to the alley and hurled each dish, one by one, against the brick wall. 

  
  


* * *

“We don’t have money,” Heyward said, early the next morning when they were both awake before anyone else. They were both staring at the coffee maker, waiting. 

“I know.” 

“If we did have a small amount of money, what would you want for your birthday?” 

“Oh, just being alive is plenty.” 

“Don’t say that to your mama, this birthday thing has her upset enough. She got the entire family moving heaven and earth to be here tomorrow.” 

“Do I still have to pretend to be surprised if all three of you have told me now?” 

“You sure do, your cousins are taking this very seriously. If we had around, say thirty dollars, what do you want?” 

Oh shit.

“Can I have a dog?” 

“You cannot.”

“A stray dog? One that doesn’t cost money? It’s therapeutic.” 

“No, and that’s it. What else?” 

“A car.” 

“You’re getting real close to getting a very nice toothbrush.” 

Out of nowhere, JJ remembered Dr. Death, and how much he loved her. And they definitely could have a snake here. A tank was doable, and JJ knew how to get mice now, even if it was kind of sad that they had to die. The snake would be better enough, even with the sad. 

“Can I have a snake? A small one. A corn snake.” 

The coffee maker beeped and Heyward grabbed the pot before JJ tried. “Jesus Christ, you little freak. We’ll see. Consider a very nice toothbrush as your backup.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


Little kids don’t know the difference between fake surprise and real, so Gemma and Aster enjoyed the moment JJ got home more than anyone else. Almost. 

Gemma burst toward him and JJ reacted quickly, picking her up right away. “We surprised you!” 

“Oh my god you did, so much,” JJ gushed. 

Gemma grinned and grabbed his shirt collar. “How old are you?” 

“I’m four.” 

“No, _I’m_ four!” 

Ezekiel brought red velvet cupcakes which was extremely fucking nice and his wife brought these like vegan dessert clouds which was almost as nice. At this point, JJ knew he was supossed to talk to everyone at the party to be polite, but once he got cupcakes he went rude as fuck and hung out on the couch with Pope and Kiara. Thad wasn’t really friends with Kie and Pope, but he was immediately friends with Aster once he challenged her to mancala. 

“How’s being seventeen?” Pope asked, “Feeling wiser?” 

“Dumber, actually.” 

Aster left the kitchen and came to the door to the front room looking the most serious a seven-year-old could. “Is Thad your cousin?”

“Yeah.” 

“He doesn’t look like your cousin.” 

“Yeah, he’s real ugly compared to you Aster, but it’s unfortunately true.” 

“But he’s not my cousin because he’s in your different family, and I’m only this family, _right?”_

“Yeah, you’re in charge, he’s not your cousin. He’s so awful, go hit him for me, please.”

Thad called from the kitchen, “Aster, stop procrastinating, come back and I’ll tell you about every embarrassing thing your cousin has ever done.” 

It was really nice. It was so different than anything that’d ever happened before that there wasn’t a second of having weird sad feelings about it. Ezekiel took a moment to give the really helpful advice, “You gotta start thinking about retirement, start saving,” while he and Gweneth started getting the girls ready to go, until Ms. H said, “Oh no no, the girls are gonna wanna see JJ’s present.” 

JJ sat up and started subtly looking around. He kind of pushed down hoping for a present because there visibly wasn’t one, and he knew everyone had to take off work. It was cool but getting a present anyway was even cooler.

“I don’t think they do,” Gweneth said carefully. 

“They probably do, Heyward’s getting it out of his car. If it’s too scary, you tell them about it first. JJ, c’mon to the kitchen.” 

Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit. JJ knew what he was getting. Grabbing Kie and Pope’s hands with him, JJ rushed to the kitchen. 

Heyward stepped away from the counter, revealing the snake JJ immediately and without reservations named Dr. Felonious Rex. In her clean, strong tank complete with a log to hide in, and a branch to climb. He took the top off the tank and carefully reached in, letting Dr. Felonious Rex decide if she wanted to trust him. 

“How the hell are we going to fit this in our room?”

“This is the most important thing in our house, we’ll throw out everything else.” 

Dr. Felonious Rex got kind of overwhelmed, but once the rest of the family left, JJ let her crawl over his arms, and took deep, cool breaths while she moved. She was so beautiful, buttermilk yellow with orange diamonds. He watched her move and felt like this was the only moment that was happening, at all. 

Pope went upstairs to move some shit off their dresser so she could come home, and once it was ready Pope carried the tank up and JJ followed with Dr. Felonious Rex. He settled on the extra bed, which was so covered in junk that when Ms. Heyward came to the door he should have been a little worried that it didn’t look like a bed, but he wasn’t. He had Dr. Felonious Rex to think about, he wasn’t worried about anything. 

“You look like a whole new person, JJ,” she said. 

“I am,” JJ said, “I’m a parent now, I’m seventeen, I’m someone who can eat five cupcakes in twenty minutes.” 

“That’s a whole lot.” 

“Yeah, and that’s just today. Watch out, Ms. H, there’s no limit to the places I'll go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from the song Onions by the Mountain Goats. 
> 
> I probably wrote four times as much content as you see here to arrive at what I wanted to say. If ever a chapter about Christmas, or church, or a lot more with Ezekiel comes out, I wrote it this week. 
> 
> Thank you again for your generosity and comments. They really mean so much to me, please keep commenting. I get so excited every time.


	9. Invent my own family if it comes to that. Hold them close, hold them near. Tell them no one's ever going to hurt them here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A boiling point is reached after Luke finally calls on time. JJ just tries to stop everyone from making it into a big deal but they won't. There's no winning.

Back at the beginning, JJ spent weeks sure that the Heyward’s wouldn’t be as sociopathic as the college fucks at the group home who said all his clothes were inappropriate just because they were a little worn out. Because  _ no one  _ on the Cut dressed to the nines because whatever you put on was going to be at least partially wrecked by the end of the day. 

He was kind of right. They didn’t touch his clothes, JJ just brought them upstairs and wore the better ones for a while, just in case. But then he got sloppy and came downstairs on a school day in his Coors shirt. 

“No!” Ms. Heyward said when he was barely in view. 

“What did I do?” 

She walked over and pulled up the cut open edge of his shirt under his arm. “No! Oh God no. Did you think you were going to school in this?” 

Pope edged toward the door. “Okay, so I’m going to just head to school. Bye Mom!” 

“Dude, come back and help me.” 

“Bye JJ!” 

Fucking deserter. His only ally lost, JJ went back to working on Ms. Heyward. “It’s fine. Really. The only other option is I wear stuff that smells like fish guts.” 

“This is a beer shirt. You’re going to  _ school.  _ I can see your nipples. _ ” _

“ _ Gross. _ ” 

“It is gross! I am sure you have a dress code that this breaks in ten ways, not to mention the talk that will come out of this. 'Did you hear about the Black family that sent JJ Maybank to school looking homeless?'” 

“No one cares about us.” 

“Stop. This is not an arguing thing. No. No, no. You need to go upstairs and put something on that isn’t  _ cut,  _ don’t have holes, and if you don’t have anything, take something of Pope’s. We are going to the mainland to get you some new things on Sunday, but Pope has plenty so no excuses to try this again.” 

He didn’t fucking look  _ homeless,  _ but this wasn’t a real important fight so Ms. Heyward got to win. The Coors shirt was the only thing JJ was outright “not allowed” to leave the house in. But no one said a thing though about any of the other stuff he started out with, unless he was going to school. 

Or church. Literally one set of clothes was good enough for church, but that was another story.

It was still fucking rude because JJ had been alive for sixteen years without dying of exposure but the entire “no holes, no rips, no stains” rule was a lot easier to follow when he had lots of new options that he chose himself. 

Goodwill new mostly, but also some of it was honest to God  _ new. _ Like the green fleece-lined flannel he wore all winter. Or the long sleeve shirts from Amazon that JJ got in some trouble for cutting the open the cuffs of, but not that much. Or the only set of clothes that were good enough for church, but that was another story. 

In November when it got undeniably cold, Ms. H made them both sort out the clothes they’d stopped wearing, and take them to the laundromat to clean before they stored them in a plastic bin in Pope’s study corner until Spring. Which was hilariously elaborate, but JJ did it anyway and found that he’d stopped wearing almost all the clothes he’d brought from home. Didn’t give it a ton of thought, they weren’t exactly the kind of stuff that kept you warm. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


A lot happened between putting away his old clothes, and taking them out again in April. 

Like Dr. Felonious Rex. 

Everyone loved Dr. Felonious Rex. Which was exactly what she deserved. JJ used his Chromebook to find out how to take care of her full time, it was way more important than school. He found out that he wasn’t supposed to handle her until at least a week after she got settled in and he apologized to her four hundred times, and stopped Heyward from taking her when he came in their room to visit her. 

“She has to get used to things. She doesn’t get what’s going on,” JJ explained. Heyward nodded and leaned down to see where Dr. Felonious Rex was hiding under her log. “I shouldn’t have handled her. I wouldn’t like someone grabbing me when I got somewhere new.”

“Well you didn’t know. Do better now,” Heyward said. “Did Mom help you order the frozen mice?” 

“Yeah,” JJ said. When he got paid on Friday, he immediately got cash so he could give it to Ms. H to order food for Dr. Felonious Rex online. “I’m kind of glad I don’t have to like, kill mice.” 

Heyward hummed and moved a little, like he was trying to see Dr. Felonious Rex better. “I had dogs.” 

“You did?” 

“Yep.” Heyward must have gotten a full-on look at Dr. Felonious Rex because he smiled in kind of a silly way. “Mean ones. All this stuff about how ‘no dog is bad’? You seen that?” 

“No.” 

“Those dogs were bad. Cujo bad. Or my Daddy made them bad. I don’t know.” 

It was weird that Heyward was saying this like, really real stuff while he was looking for JJ’s snake, but JJ didn’t like saying real stuff unless he was distracted either. “What happened to them?” 

“Must’ve died after I left. Been more than thirty years now.” 

“That’s sad.” 

“It’s life, ain’t anyone teach you about death yet?” 

“No,” JJ struggled to explain, “Like, if your dad made them bad. That’s sad.” 

“Nah, we ain't talking about that,” Heyward said. “How much longer she gonna hide for?” 

JJ didn’t think that was exactly fair because they talked about  _ his  _ dad nonstop, especially now that the phone calls were happening. While Dad was in prison, things were kind of simple. JJ wasn’t with Dad because even if he was the best Dad in the world, he was in prison. The role that the beating had in Dad getting in prison wasn’t something they had to talk about. JJ’s life before didn’t come up for weeks at a time before Dad came out, and when it did, it was just like “JJ needs to learn about expiration dates” or “The Heyward’s don’t know how to fix their cars and JJ can help them,” and it wasn’t that heavy. 

But now JJ was here, and Dad was just a few miles away. It was fucking exhausting sometimes, and it felt like there wasn’t any good option. By Maybank culture he was supposed to run away and go back with Dad. His family didn’t even want him to  _ talk  _ to Dad, he could tell that by the way they watched him so carefully while he waited for the phone call, or while he sat on the phone. There was no fucking winning. He couldn’t have some combination of getting the chill kind of drunk with Dad and fishing together, then coming home to his family to get hugs and food and not be scared.

Maybe he as fucking up somehow and making Dad not want to call, but they’d never fucking get there the way things were now. 

Ms. H didn’t tell Corrine about Dad not calling. She was like, “We  _ are  _ going to tell her that he’s usually late, and that you’re always upset after,” which was fine like neither of those were a big problems, especially since after his birthday Dad called only seven minutes late. 

“I got a snake,” JJ told him pretty much right away. 

“Why?” 

“For my birthday.” 

“Fuck. Yeah. Happy birthday.” 

“Thanks, me living is a major accomplishment, so. Her name is Dr. Felonious Rex.” 

“The fuck does that mean?” 

“It--that birthdays aren’t a big deal because it just means I’m not dead." 

Did Dad think he was a bitch for talking about his birthday? Dad couldn’t know that last week was basically just about JJ turning seventeen because he hadn’t called. Did Thad tell someone, did Dad think he was a soft bitch now just because other people cared about him? 

“No. The name. Doctor whatever.” 

“Right. Dr. Felonious Rex. It just sounds cool.” 

“She bite?” 

“No, she’s a corn snake, they rarely bite.” 

“What colors is she?’ 

That talk went really well, because the only thing JJ really wanted to talk about right now was his snake, and Dad asked questions he knew how to answer. It felt like the secret third option, like he could just tell Dad about his life and he would listen. Like, maybe another time he could tell Dad how his English teacher said he’d probably jumped three grades in reading, or maybe he could tell him about Kie and Pope which he hadn’t done at all. 

But right now he just talked about Dr. Felonious Rex. 

“--because she eats a lot faster than Dr. Death did.” 

“Dr. Death?” Dad asked. 

“Yeah, my first snake. Dr. Death would--” 

“When the hell did you have a snake?” 

Eleven. When JJ was turning eleven Dad was smuggling with a better crew, fucking creepy guys and Dad would yell at him to “get out” half the times he walked through the front door. Looking back, JJ knew that Dad had a lot more money because he was fucked up all the time, on more expensive shit than alcohol and medications he conned from Medicaid doctors. Shit that burned his brain up and JJ tried to stay away because--

Other story.

Other story. 

Fully other not now different story. 

“One of your friends gave her to me. I don’t know. When I was eleven.” 

“When you were  _ eleven?  _ Who gave you a snake?” 

“I don’t know,” JJ said, feeling a crawling fear at how Dad was approaching furious really fast. “I didn’t keep her. I couldn’t feed her.” 

“Who the fuck gave you a snake?” Dad demanded. 

JJ got louder. “I didn’t keep her. Why are you mad at me?” 

Heyward touched his shoulder and JJ jumped. Heyward held up one hand to show he was chill, in the other hand was his phone that showed that JJ had three minutes left. “I need to talk to your dad,” Heyward said. He’d warned JJ about this before, that he just wanted to talk to Dad after to see how things were going. 

“Heyward wants to talk to you,” JJ said, shoving the fully irrational fear back. 

“JJ you fucking answer me. Those guys weren’t good people, they weren’t supposed to be talking to you.” 

He laughed, he couldn’t help it. Was Dad acting like he was some soccer mom protecting him from stranger danger? After all he did? “Dad, I’m fine. Jesus. I’m fine. Heyward has to talk to you.” 

“I’m going to call you next week,” Dad said. 

He said it like a promise, and it was exactly what JJ wanted but he felt hella fucking annoyed because there was no way Dad had any idea what he’d be like a week from now. He was easy to talk to four minutes ago and now he was all out Dad again. He could be dead in a week.

“Okay,” JJ said. “Cool. Bye.” 

  
  


* * *

  
  


JJ didn’t ditch school a lot, but he always finished early in Industrial Arts, and it was his last period which made it really hard to stay, especially when he went to a new website about how to take care of Dr. Felonious Rex and found out that because her tank got sun from the window she might overheat and die, so he left. 

“JJ Maybank do you think you’re doing?” Mr. Tyson asked when JJ stood up and grabbed his backpack. JJ didn’t answer, he answered to a higher power right now. No one stopped him from going out the side door because no one actually gave a shit. School would be over in twenty minutes, which meant he’d gone hours without seeing Dr. FR and she could be dead. He ran home, boots smacking against the dirt, and let himself in the house without checking if his parents’ cars were there. 

At least the blinds were closed. They were closed a lot, because JJ had two headaches in a row the days after he talked to Dad. He got to stay home from school, because Ms. H heard him throwing up overnight and started talking about when they’d have to go to a hospital to get fluids and pain shit like they had before which was so stupid and it was a different story, a different story, a different story. 

The only way JJ’s headaches were relevant was because having the blinds closed made them hurt less, and it also saved Dr. Felonious Rex’s life. That was this story and it was so much more important. 

“Sorry,” JJ said as soon as he came into the room. He checked where she was in the tank and made sure she was alive. She slithered out from behind her branch and looked it him like she was confused. “Sorry,” JJ said again, lifting her tank and putting her on the only dark place on the floor. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.” 

He texted Kie and Pope to come over. He texted like four hundred people to get off his shift at the hotel. He texted Ms. H and told her he didn’t need a ride. Then he smoked out the window until he didn’t feel like shit. Which, after being so fucking responsible to do all those things, he’d fucking earned. 

When Pope and Kie got home, JJ was still kneeling by the open window to smoke out of it. Kie got on the bed right away and took the vape out of his hand for herself. She took a few long pulls and didn’t hand it back. 

“Hey, I delay caring about whatever little freakout you’re having because I need to tell you about my fucking day,” Kie said. 

“Tell me about your fucking day,” JJ said. 

Kie nodded but kept smoking. Pope carefully walked around the thank and lay down on the outside edge of the bed. “Is it time to worry about how much we smoke?” Pope asked. 

“No,” Kie and JJ said at the same time. “So,” Kie picked up, “I told Ana Soto about my plan for AP Psychology, right? That we--okay we got to pick  _ any  _ topic, and I told her that I picked language acquisition, and how I was going to do part of the presentation in Spanish, right? And okay, so like yeah a third of the class could have done that but I was the only one who was going to in the first place. That’s really specific. That is a presentation about language acquisition, and doing part of it in another language. It’s too specific for it to happen twice without copying.” 

“Yes,” JJ agreed, trying to keep a serious face which was hard when Kie was getting more and more animated. At one point she gestured so wildly her hand banged against the window. 

“So  _ I  _ was supposed to go second to present, okay? That was what I signed up for last week. Then suddenly Ana is like, “Oh miss, miss, can I go? When it was my turn. And it was whatever because that just gave me and extra minute but then  _ this bitch  _ did a fucking presentation on language acquisition in Spanish.” 

“Shit,” Pope said. “That’s cold.” 

“That’s evil,” Kiara corrected. “She was like, ‘Hey, I mean, how was I supposed to know you speak Spanish?’ I look Dominican as hell.” She handed the vape back to JJ and fell back on the bed. 

“Girls should just start punching each other,” JJ said, “You get into so many of these situations.” 

“I don’t get into them, I was nothing but nice to Ana,” Kiara sighed. “Even--remember like two seconds ago when Sophie kept tagging me in pictures of carrots? There’s not even a stereotype that explains, it’s just annoying. Couldn’t fit in at the Kook Academy, can’t fit in here.” 

“You fit in with us,” Pope said. 

“Not really,” Kie said, “I mean yes. But you’re boys. I need friends, I just need people I’m not cosmically tied to.” 

JJ had suggestions, but this was definitely a situation where suggestions were not helpful. He took one more hit off his vape then fell to lie next to her. “Sucks.” 

“Sucks,” Kie agreed, “It’s just everywhere. Strangers wanna know if I’m white, Latina, Black, they just want to nail it down to exact percentiles. Culture, what's that? They want fractions. And what percent Kook I am. Kooks think I’m a Pogue, Pogues think I’m a Kook--even you guys do it. It’s not one hundred percent of anything and it freaks everyone out. I can’t fit in.” 

Pope and JJ made eye contact over Kie’s shoulder and silently agreed. On a mental count of three, they simultaneously squished Kiara and she started laughing right away. Pope threw an arm over her so he was leveraging JJ’s body to squish her and he did the same. 

“I think you fit here pretty well Kie,” Pope said through laughs. “Don’t have to fit anywhere else.” 

“This is a patch solution at best,” Kie said, trying for a serious tone of voice then she started laughing again. 

They couldn’t be silly for too long, because Kie had to go to the Wreck, and Pope had to work at the store. JJ decided to come too because eventually, the parents would find out that JJ ditched school and dropped a shift at work, and there was no reason not to offer up some free labor before the hammer dropped. 

Before that though, they had to get Dr. Felonious Rex to her new home. Pope was not mega psyched about using their very limited free time to put his study stuff in the hallway to push the dresser against the window wall and move Pope’s study nook to the other side of it. It meant that it would be a lot harder for JJ to lean over and distract Pope while he was working, and you’d think he’d be happy about it. 

Kie stood on the extra bed while it was happening. “Have you guys thought about moving more stuff? This room is really inefficient.” 

“It’s not inefficient, we’re just poor,” Pope said. JJ shoved Pope to the side of the dresser by the door and he went to the other end to pull. On the count of three, they gave it all they could, trying to move the heaviest dresser in the world. They groaned and pushed until Pope stepped back and put his hands in the air. “Okay. That was six inches. I think that’s enough.” 

“You should take the drawers out,” Kie said. “Unless you’re too poor for removing drawers.” 

So they took out the drawers and put them on the bed and in the hallway and argued all along about how Pope took up way more of the drawer space and he wouldn’t if he would just fold literally anything and that JJ had no right to complain because he wore Pope’s clothes just as often and could fold them himself so shut up. 

They got the dresser moved but that was no reason to stop fighting. 

“I already fold my clothes, I don’t have to change,” JJ said while he retrieved Pope’s study pillow from the hall and threw it in the new study corner. 

“I’m really bored of this fight, can we just agree that whoever wore it folds it? Or literally anything that stops this?” 

“Fine by me, you’re scaring Dr. Felonious Rex. Kie, help me bring her home. Please.” 

By the time they got her settled, Pope came back in the room with the white bin he kept in his study corner to put books on. “JJ this is our summer stuff. We should just put them in the drawers before we leave.” 

JJ gave the bin a quick look. He could see stacks of carefully folded clothes, and the edge of a white shirt he immediately knew was his and not Pope’s, even if he wasn’t fully sure how he knew that. He didn’t want to see his other clothes. 

“No.”

Pope gave him a crazy look. “What? Yes.” 

“Do whatever you want,” JJ said. He went to check on Dr. Felonious Rex to see how she was handling the change of scene. He knew she was upset because she was coiled up in a ball, because corn snakes did that when they were scared. Corn snakes didn’t bite which was a really rough break because if JJ was a snake he’d want to bite everyone. It would be so much better if Dr. Felonious Rex understood when he quietly told her, “It’s okay, you're safe, you’re just in a different spot.” 

He turned around and saw Pope open the bin. “Pope, you realize your mom is going to make you wash all that once you take it out, plus whatever winter stuff is going to go in the bin, and we seriously do not have time to go to the laundromat.” 

Pope didn’t need more than a second before closing the bin and shoving it back in the new study corner. “God, that’s true. She’s so crazy sometimes. Wait, why is she suddenly  _ my _ mom?” 

“Because you’re crazy too Pope Heyward, that has nothing to do with me. I got a fully different set of genetic crazy.” 

  
  


* * *

  
  


They decided to walk because The Wreck and Heyward’s were in basically the same place and about halfway there JJ and Pope picked up fighting about folding clothes again. If John B was here he’d make fun of them so bad, but John B was a moron who lived surrounded by trash and JJ had no interest in living that way. 

Kie climbed a rock on the side of the road across the street from Heyward’s and jumped off. Tourons were streaming around them like idiots, in clumps of white families that jumped out of her way with little gasps when Kie jumped down on the sidewalk. “Sometimes I feel really jealous that you guys both live here and spend so much time together. I don’t right now though.” 

“Well if you’re jealous it’s real easy to live with us if you want, just get your dad to crack your brain open.” 

Kie stopped right there on the sidewalk, in the Tourons way. Pope did too, so JJ also had to. “What the fuck?” Kie said, “JJ that is so fucked up.” 

He looked over and saw that Pope was staring at him, looking almost scared. 

“It’s not fucked up,” JJ doubled down, “Getting your brains bashed in has a direct result of moving in. It’s the only guaranteed method.” No one laughed. “ _ What? _ ” 

Kie took a deep breath. “You just made a joke about my dad cracking my brain open. So I’m a little upset.” 

What the  _ fuck?  _ “No. I didn’t say--no. I didn’t say that.” 

“Yeah, and it was fucked up,” Pope said. 

JJ laughed as loud as he could. “God--we make jokes about shit like this all the time. You guys are bugging out for no reason.” 

Kie and Pope looked at each other and shared one of the looks that they shared. They had the  _ smarter than you _ look, that could be about anyone. He and Kie and, a  _ this is way too not chill _ look that was usually about Pope. Pope and JJ had  _ shit we gotta fix this ourselves _ look. 

There were a lot more looks. But this look was the  _ JJ is a fucking idiot and we know how even if he doesn’t _ .

“You are the only one who makes jokes about abusive parents,” Pope said. “And we let you, because it’s your parent, but it’s getting obvious that you’re just not dealing with your shit. Roping us into it isn't cool.” 

“I don’t have any rope. How can I be roping you anything?” 

“That’s not funny,” Kie said like this was the most serious thing in the world. “You’re not dealing with it.” 

JJ rolled his eyes and stepped in front of an old lady Touron. “Hi. I’m JJ. My dad hit me so bad for so long and it hurt so much. Isn’t that sad?” 

The old lady took a step back, like JJ hit her. She had grey hair and blue eyes like his that were looking at him with huge alarm. “Are you alright?” she asked, voice high. 

“Yep!” JJ said. He held up his bare arms to display that they were bruise-free. “I’m fine. That’s all I needed, thank you. See?” he told them, “It’s dealt with.” 

The old lady looked at Kie and Pope for back up. They looked exhausted. Fuck them. “He’s fine,” Pope said, “he’s actually fine. You can keep moving.” Looking unsure, she slowly walked away, and Pope watched her until she was out of earshot and looked right back at JJ. “You are not fine. I’m telling our parents.” 

“‘I’m telling our parents’,” JJ mimicked. “God damn it. I keyed Aiden’s truck for you, Kiara. I stay up all night with you Pope and--I freaking learned calculus for you. I make one joke and I’m a freak? We talk all the time about when people are fucking sexist or racist, or anyone who fucks with you and I don’t turn on you. I help.” 

“We don’t love the people who fuck with us,” Kie said, “we don’t defend them. And we actually let ourselves feel things. You don’t. You’re not asking for help, you’re just eroding.” 

JJ wanted to explode. Not to yell or hit someone, he wanted his physical body to be sacrificed to an explosion that was so real that it leveled the entire island. 

Pope touched his arm and JJ was far gone enough that he almost hit him back. “Look,” Pope said. 

Heyward was standing outside his shop, one foot in the door. He pointed at them with two fingers, and pointed at the ground.  _ Come here, now,  _ couldn’t be more clear if it was said out loud. 

“I’m out,” JJ said. But when Pope grabbed his arm and dragged him across the street and his brain was too explody to stop him. He felt Kie kiss his cheek and heard her say bye, but he didn’t really hear or feel anything else until Heyward had him in the office alone. 

“I didn’t do anything,” he said. 

Heyward looked at him and took a deep breath. “I get that’s a reflex, but you need to tell me what you think I think you did.” 

He was all sweaty and smelled like the store and he was standing really close to JJ because the room was small, but he was too far away to feel afraid. Maybe even if he was all there he wouldn’t be scared. “I made a joke that Pope didn’t like.” 

Heyward rubbed his eyes and JJ couldn’t really tell if that was bad or not. “Have you talked to your dad?” 

That was both not what he expected and too on topic to deal with right now. “What? No. Why?” 

“I’m serious JJ.” 

“I didn’t.” 

“Did you talk to your cousins or anyone else in your family?”

“What’s going on?” 

Heyward looked toward the closed door between them and the store. “Your--Luke has been calling your--he has been calling both of us repeatedly. He came to the store before I got here, scared the hell out of Penna before the guys at the dock heard him, and got him out.” 

No more exploding. Just dissolving, coming apart into pieces so small they’d make their way to the ocean and get washed away. 

“I didn’t tell him to come here.” 

Heyward didn’t even let that stand for a second, “Shit, that’s not even what--your dad is trying to find you. He’s gonna find our house by night, I’m sure of it.” 

His dumb brain was happy and terrified at the same time. “He doesn’t know where we live. Why does he want me?” 

“I don’t know. It’s a small town, he’ll find us. So what we’re gonna do is you’re gonna hang out here and do homework, and I’m gonna handle it.” 

“How? You don’t know what he’s like.” 

“I sure as shit do. I’ll handle it. Do homework.” 

This was a really great example of how the world could be on fire and his parents would put him in a literal closet with nothing but gum on him and expect him to do homework. 

JJ fell asleep. There weren’t any new sensations to experience in one day, so sleep naturally came next. Ms. H came to the store and picked them up when the store closed and she brought them to Ezekiel’s house without explaining why. Ezekiel didn’t live in their neighborhood, he was an outlier in John B's two jobs or two houses paradigm. Just one house but in a neighborhood with driveways and he had a  _ guest room _ . JJ could tell he was basically her kid, especially after he mentioned how little he was when their mom died. He was her first big success story too, because now he was a lawyer on the mainland and just lived on the Other Banks to help Ms. H with their dad. 

And apparently, at this moment, her foster son with the insane dad. 

Ms. H asked Pope to drive to Ezekiel's and while he was pulling out of backlot, JJ saw that it was because her hands were shaking. She was so fucking afraid and it was because of his Dad. 

That's when he started feeling a storm inside. Not the exploding kind, the low, crackling ember kind that felt so familiar it was like it'd been inside him since he was born. It was more dangerous than the immediate explosion, because by the time JJ could feel it'd gotten out of control, he was already in the middle of doing something stupid and couldn't stop. 

They got to Ezekiel's house right before it was Gemma's bedtime and JJ got in trouble for "riling her up" even though all he did was pick her up and spin her around when she asked to play airplane. Ms. H was distracted and kept going into other rooms to talk to Ezekiel while Gweneth explained every ingredient in her vegan soup to JJ and Pope. Eventually, Ms. H came in and interrupted Gweneth. 

“Homework,” she said. 

“JJ doesn’t have any homework stuff,” Pope said. Ms. H was way spun up, she just looked at him until Pope said, “Uh, JJ can sign into my Chromebook. I can do my paper assignments.” 

“Wonderful,” she said, and then left again. 

His parents weren’t going to get rid of him because his Dad was crazy. They weren’t going to be so tired of this shit in one night that they were done with him. JJ should have killed Dad. He had a gun, and he didn’t care about anything and he could have killed him. None of those things were true now. 

How the fuck could anyone have expected him to do homework until now. All his brain could do was knock down other stories, stories that wouldn’t help, stories about things Dad did to him and did to other people and might do now and it was not helpful. It was another story it was not the now story. 

So many times before now JJ blamed the Heywards for stuff like this. Because normally Dad doing something fucking terrifying? He’d roll his eyes and go to John B’s, or maybe shove Dad on the sofa when he looked ready to tip over and wedge a chair under his bedroom door and go to sleep. It didn’t help to treat it like some global emergency. They made everything into such a big deal and--

Dad scared Ms. Heyward. No one should scare her. It wasn’t right. 

“What would dealing with it look like?” JJ floated over to Pope when everyone was in the other room. Pope glanced at him and waited. “No I’m serious. Because if you know, now would be a really good time to tell me. Pope, I’m fucking serious. Be the smart one, tell me what to do.” 

“This isn’t funny,” Pope said. 

“I’m serious.” 

Pope gestured to the whole room, the whole situation. “This. This whole thing isn’t funny. It’s really fucked up. You act like it’s still happening, like you live there and still have to lie but you don’t. You don’t gotta talk to me but our parents are obsessed with you. You just need to tell the truth for once in your life.”

“So glad you’re an expert,” JJ said reflexively. 

“Not funny.” 

Heyward was staying home with some friends and JJ kind of imagined everyone who had ever been to their house was there, protecting it. Corrine said they had to call the police if anything like this happened, which they weren’t doing. Which they obviously weren’t doing. It felt like there was already a plan in place like maybe his parents planned for this. 

Before the storm boiled over something kind of funny happened. 

“You boys mind sharing the pullout?” Ezekiel asked, dropping blankets on the couch. “We got sleeping bags if you do.” 

JJ and Pope looked at each other. Kind of waiting for who would talk first. “I think we’ll be okay,” Pope said. 

So that was funny. 

Less funny was how JJ jerked awake before he knew why. He didn’t wait to know why, he shook Pope awake, and as his feet hit the floor he heard Dad’s voice. He took off to the front door. 

Ezekiel blocked the front door, holding only a foot wide and covering the entire gap with his body. JJ couldn’t even see Dad. 

“You are not supposed to be here,” Ezekiel said quietly. 

JJ braced for an explosion, but Dad came back just as quiet, “You gotta move, because he’s  _ my _ kid, and he’s mine to talk to and you--” 

“You need to leave. This is my property, and I am asking you politely to leave.” 

“Politely?” He was fine. He didn’t even sound high. JJ kept moving to the door, but Pope had caught up and grabbed him, pulling him back. JJ tore past him easily, and the commotion was enough for Ezekiel to look back, breaking the barrier. “JJ,” Dad barked. 

He ran, fighting past Ezekiel when he lunged in front of him, and all at once Dad hugged him, holding him tight and stroking the back of his head. It felt so desperately like home that he had to fight with everything in him not to cry. Dad stepped back, further away from the house and JJ went with him. 

“I got you,” Dad said quietly, “I got you.” 

Maybe he wasn’t high. Maybe he was better. JJ didn’t want to let go. Dad did first. He stepped back and looked JJ over, and JJ looked at him too. Dad was skinnier and JJ was sure he was wearing the exact same tank top and shorts he was the last time he saw him. It was so grimy, JJ could feel it on his skin from where they hugged, the button-up shirt over it looked stiff with dirt. 

He felt conscious of how different he looked. His hair was shorter now, because whenever it got “raggedy” someone made sure he got it cut even if the how and where was a little complicated at first. He was just wearing a blue t-shirt that probably smelled like fish guts. But it was clean, and he could see Dad’s eye linger on the sun Kie painted on the left pocket. 

Jesus fuck, did he used to look like Dad?

“What are you doing here?’ he asked. 

Dad clapped him on the shoulder, a little too hard. “C’mon. We’re going home.” 

“No,” JJ said immediately. No pause, no hesitation. “Dad, what did you do today? You freaked everyone out.” 

“Did a lot today,” Dad said, “you gotta be more specific.” 

“You came to the store.” 

“Came to get you,” Dad said, trying to touch him again, grab him by the back of his neck to pull him along. JJ step back closer to the house to break away from him. 

“Get inside now,” Ezekiel said firmly. He heard more voices inside, heard Ms. H say something in a high scared voice but he had to keep his eyes on dad. 

“Right now. You’re coming with me, right now,” Dad growled. 

If JJ had thirty seconds of warning before he lost it, that was twenty-nine seconds more than Dad had.

“ _ No _ ,” JJ said. “You have to leave.” 

“This ain’t no kind of reunion,” Dad said, way louder. JJ saw a light turn on across the street. “You’re mine, you ain’t meant to be here. This is bullshit, I played along but I ain’t anymore. You’re grown, John Jacob. I ain’t playing relay race just to talk to you. You ain’t that special. Come back with me or we’re done.” 

It was so bad. 

It lasted so long. 

It hurt so much. 

“You need to leave,” JJ said. 

He reached up to knock him in the head like it was a joke, but JJ took another step back. His heels hit the edge of the door, and immediately someone's hand was on his shoulder. 

“You fucking brain damaged?” Dad asked. 

“Yep,” JJ said. “And that’s the last way you’ll ever hurt me.” 

Dad jolted and stepped back. JJ had hit him back plenty, come close to killing him more than once but JJ knew with cool clarity that this was the closest he’d ever get to a final blow. 

“You,” Dad stumped to talk, to ramp back up to furious, “you ain’t getting it your way. I ain’t calling you--you’re done.” 

“Leave,” JJ repeated. “Please. Leave us alone.” 

Dad didn’t scream, he didn’t curse, he just turned around and left. JJ heard his truck start, but he didn’t see it because he went inside and shut the door. 

And he cried. He cried a lot. Like every single day he’d bit his tongue to keep from crying had peaked and crashed onto land. Cried on the pullout next to Pope, cried when Ms. H came out because the crying was so loud and she held him and told him to stop apologizing. 

He even cried in the morning when Ezekiel called Gemma “silly bear” when she spilled her juice, which wasn’t funny, but Aster kept yelling, “What happened? I don’t believe it was a sleepover, we didn’t even have popcorn!” and that kind of was. 

* * *

Dr. Felonious Rex got used to them. 

Corrine came over and JJ made her come upstairs and look at her. 

“How big is she going to get?” she asked. 

“Up to six feet,” JJ said. 

“Excuse me?” Heyward said from the door, “You sure as hell did not tell me that.” 

“I’ll be gone by then, it takes a while,” JJ explained. 

“Even if you don’t live here, I’m gonna have to be dealing with a six-foot snake,” Heyward said, “You’re gonna be bringing it over, and it’s gonna squeeze your cousins to death.” 

“She won’t, she’s not that kind of snake” JJ promised, following him and Corrine downstairs. 

Corrine was really stressed about what happened with Dad. JJ already kind of knew that she was new, but the way she fretted and kept asking him if he was okay really proved it. “This means that stuff we’re doing, the contact stuff, it might not be a good idea. We might want to go for a restraining disorder, actually.” 

They all knew damn well that a restraining order would be meaningless to Dad, but the parents still humored her about it. “If JJ was younger, we’d talk about reassessing Luke’s parental rights,” Corrine said, kind of as an afterthought while she was packing up her bag. 

“What does that mean?” Ms. H asked. 

“Right now he’s still legally JJ’s parent, so he can’t be adopted, but we don’t worry about that at his age.” 

Everyone kind of stopped and looked at each other, while Corrine obviously packed up her bag. JJ kind of shrugged, but nodded and Ms. H smiled and nodded back.

“Hold on now,” Heyward said, “I think we might wanna worry about that.” 

  
  


* * *

  
  


When Pope got home they unpacked the bin of clothes they put away in November when it got cold. It was seventy degrees, definitely time to do it even if Ms. H would make them wash it all again. 

JJ pulled his white Pelican Container Company out of the bin. The shirt was technically white but even though it was clean, the armpits and collar were permanently discolored and stained and the rest just overall looked dirty. The pocket on the front was hanging by threads on one side, and when JJ put his hand through the back, there were so many holes through the letters that he could see his hand. There was a rip he could fit two fingers through. It was the worst one, but the rest of his clothes were the same. 

He had no idea where it came from, just that one day he found it in his house, and put it on then it was his. It was the only way he got clothes, except when he got a new job and they handed him something, or he took one of Pope’s shirts. Sometimes the social worker at school asked him to go through the clothes in her office, but he always took one thing that ditched it right away, because all the other poor kids knew what was in there and they’d know he’d taken it.

He got so mad when they told him it was bad at the group home. He didn’t know the difference.

“Do you think Mom would make these into rags?” JJ asked. 

Pope was thought for a minute then laughed. “I think she’ll do anything you ask after you call her Mom.” 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Hebrews 11:40 by the Mountain Goats which is so this fic I struggled not to just make the whole thing the title
> 
> These chapters broke the "out of order loosely connected" spirit of the fic because this story had to be told in order. I've been calling this chapter and the preceding two the "JJ Maybank has Complex PTSD" arc. JJ's preoccupation with his dad (in canon and here) is actually part of it, and why it's so difficult to "move on" the way he thinks he should be able to and it doesn't immediately make sense 
> 
> Honestly, every chapter is the "JJ Maybanks has Complex PTSD" chapter it's always true even when it's fun, but these chapters went really hard! I cannot lie, my brain and heart are all kinds of exhausted! I hope you enjoyed the longer chapter and some resolution, I'd love to hear what you think in the comments!


	10. And slowly, surely, I saw the whole story unwind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As summer draws closer the kids prepare for finals and the beloved annual surf competition, and JJ tries saying new things.

Some stories went in circles. 

Other stories went in widening spirals. 

Summer started spreading over each day. Even before he started working, JJ didn’t really understand why school kept happening once spring break started. There was money to be made, but more importantly, there was surfing to do. 

The first time JJ really saw Pope was at a youth surf competition on the mainland. 

They went to school together and stuff, but JJ mostly knew him as the kid who got mega amped over Jeopardy review games. He actually super didn’t like Pope, because Pope didn’t like him, especially when they got put into groups together. Pope wanted to have the best drawing or get the most points or build the tallest tower and JJ wanted to go back to folding up his paper into projectiles so he hated Pope so he didn’t get hated first. 

Kildare was made of spots to go surf on, and on the Cut there enough that JJ and John B found their own, one that they agreed they wouldn’t share with anyone until they found someone worthy. It was at the edge of the tangly, far our area that JJ lived in, a patch of the island that no one looked at, and it was there that they spent hours preparing for the first free surf competition they qualified for, now that they were twelve. 

They went to their spot every day, right after school. Sometimes John B was totally unprofessional, giving up after an hour or complaining that they should go to his house to get supper, like this wasn’t serious. JJ knew he could be the best twelve-year-old boy, and he’d get a trophy and he had to be the best and bailing for dinner wasn’t what the best did. He could be the best at something for  _ once.  _

“Surf alone then,” John B said, starting to paddle back to shore. 

“Fuck you,” JJ said. John B didn’t swear much, which meant JJ was more powerful when he talked. “I can’t swim alone, if I drown then you won’t have any friends.” 

John B played at being annoyed, but he still stayed with JJ until he’d practiced for so long he felt like his body might fall apart. Then he was willing to go home. 

Rich kids’ parents drove them to competitions with $150 entry fees all over the coast and flew first class to California then bragged about their national ranking like they hadn’t paid for it all. John B figured out there were $20 entry competitions at a nearby island every spring, but getting there and $20 might as well have been $150 in California. 

Pogues like them got the Christ’s Love Surf Off sponsored by some church on the mainland that didn’t know the right words but knew enough to put together an event that every surfer on the Cut counted the days until they were twelve and could compete. Even if you had to ake a flyer with pictures of Jesus every time you took a hotdog, the hotdogs were free, the only issue was getting money for the ferry. 

JJ and John B conned their way to eight bucks each for the ferry to go watch it every year. When they were younger they could just walk the pier asking for fare money. It got a little complicated when they got older and less pitiable. When they were eleven JJ went to his cousins’ church and cried about not wanting to miss out, and while the priest went to get him the cash he broke into the money box by the candles just in case he lied and didn’t come back. But this year John B said, “We should ask people to sponsor us.” 

“Like Nascar?” JJ asked. 

“Totally,” John B said, “we’re going to be local legend this time next week, they’ll be lining up to sponsor us but by then our rates will go way up, so it’s a bargain.” 

Which was a more fun idea than theft and crying, so JJ followed John B to the hardware store, and the Wreck, and K’s Convenience and watched John B passionately offer them the opportunity to have an “Exclusive sponsorship of two amazing surfers, for only eight bucks each.” 

At the hardware store Emily the Rat laughed at them and John B restrained him from taking the American Cancer Association donation jar off the counter. There was money to take everywhere, and JJ was an expert and even getting caught was less humiliating than this. John B hugged JJ from behind, holding his arms to his sides and walking them awkwardly out of the store, JJ bitching all the way. 

“I can solve all our problems in one move,” JJ complained. John B let him go when they got around the block. “Those jars are a jackpot.” 

“A scandal could ruin our athletic career,” John B said. “C’mon, we haven’t tried Heyward’s yet.” 

John B took off without even consulting JJ. “No man, Heyward’s an asshole. He’s going to laugh at us too.” 

“No he’s not! He’s a local invested in uplifting the local youth.” 

“He doesn’t get this stuff, his son’s a weirdo.” 

John B would not be stopped. He marched into Heyward’s and walked right up to him, starting up while he put the tacky branded souvenir crap on a shelf. Heyward pretended not to notice them, then slowly looked down. 

“What’dyou want?” he asked. 

“I’m John B Routledge. This is JJ Maybank.” 

“Oh thank you, ‘cause I never met you before. What’dyou want?”

Heyward was making fun of them, but John B pressed on. “We’re competing in Christ’s Love and this time on Monday we’re gonna be on the front page of the papers.” 

Heyward raised his eyebrows and turned to face them. “That so?” 

“That’s right,” John B said, “and for just eight dollars each, you can sponsor both of us. Exclusively.” 

Heyward folded his arms and nodded. “Alright. Let’s talk terms. You get a media interview, you gotta mention this store at least twice.” He turned a little and grabbed two “Heyward’s Seafood” stickers and handed them over. John B grinned and grabbed them, handing one to JJ. “You put these on your surfboard, upright so when you’re holding them people can read it, and anyone asks you say…”

“We’re sponsored by Heyward’s Seafood, best in North Carolina,” John B said. He was bursting with pride.

JJ was just confused by how this was going down in general. “What about the money?” he asked. 

“Your daddies taking you on Saturday?” Heyward asked. They shook their heads. Heyward nodded. “Tell you what, I need a guarantee you’re gonna compete if I sponsor you. You meet me and Pope for the first ferry, and I’ll pay your fare, that’ll be the money. Sound fair?” 

JJ grabbed John B’s elbow and pulled him away. “We need to confer.” 

“Yeah, go ‘confer,’” Heyward said. 

JJ pulled John B into a corner. “We have to pretend to disagree over if we say yes,” and John B said, “Yeah, we should ask for more stuff,” and JJ said, “Yeah, I got it.” 

And they went back and JJ said, “If you pick us up and take us home, we got a deal.”

“For that, you gotta mention the store three times in every interview.” 

JJ held his hand out and Heyward shook. “We got a deal,” he said. 

Before the morning of Christ’s Love, JJ didn’t think about that the free ride came along with sitting in a car with Pope Heyward. By sixth grade, JJ was always in the stupid kid class, and he wasn’t around to see it, but he was pretty sure Pope took everything except gym at Duke University or something. But he still knew who Pope was, and he figured he was coming along to calculate the arc of the waves or some shit. 

Heyward was on time which meant JJ was not ready, because what kind of psycho got to places on time? And he honked, so JJ had to run out of the house as fast as he could without looking for food to take with because if Dad got woke up he wouldn’t care about Christ’s Love, or that there were strangers outside, he’d just care that he got woken up at 5:30 in the morning and JJ was in hitting distance. He knew that food hadn’t magically appeared in the kitchen overnight, but maybe there was something in his room he didn’t find the night before and now he couldn’t look. He was fucking hungry, and he couldn’t surf for shit if he was dizzy and his stomach hurt. 

His irritation at Heyward forcing him to go hungry got briefly displaced by curiosity at the strange surfboard next to John B’s in the flatbed. He fit his in next to it and looked through the back window and saw Pope and John B twisted around looking back at him. He dropped his board and came around and shoved John B over. John B laughed and bumped against Pope who peered over while he moved so close to his dad that Heyward made room by putting his arm around him. 

If JJ killed everyone, he wouldn’t have a ride to the competition. 

“What are you staring at?” he cut out, climbing into the bench seat and slamming the door shut. 

“Your hair looks insane,” Pope said. 

“ _ You  _ look insane.” 

Heyward started the car and backed out stupid loudly, wake people up loudly, but he talked even louder when he said, “You three talk like idiots, I’ll yank your sponsorships like that.” 

“You’re not sponsoring me,” Pope said. 

“Hell yeah I am, I’ve been sponsoring you for twelve damn years.”

That meant that by math rules, Heyward was JJ’s dad until he dropped him off tonight. He decided not to say that because it counted as talking like an idiot. He did say, “Which one of you has the surfboard?” 

“Me?” Pope said like JJ thought an old fat guy was surfing. 

“You don’t surf.” 

“Why, ‘cause I don’t say ‘way cool bro’ to teachers?” 

“No, because you don’t surf.”

“I do too.” 

“Where?” 

“By that shore by where they set that mailbox on fire.” 

“No you don’t, I’ve never seen you there.” 

“I’ve never seen  _ you  _ there.” 

John B jabbed him in the side to shut him up. “How long you been surfing, Pope?” 

Pope went from matching JJ’s glare to excitedly talking to John B. “I just started this year, once the water got warm enough. You know Micah Walters, he’s a few years older? He started teaching me, I’m getting good.” 

God damn it. Micah Walters was the best eighth-grader last year, he was going to be the best ninth-grader this year, and Pope was the best at everything at school and now he’d be the best surfer. It wasn’t fair. Pope Heyward got to be the best at everything else, it was  _ his  _ turn to be the best. JJ found ways to avoid talking to him on the ferry, which was not damn easy because everyone and their mother were crowded in with their boards so he got all smashed against Pope. 

“Do you think you’re gonna win?” Pope asked, his face all way too close to JJ’s. 

“Yeah,” JJ said, “I didn’t need Micah Walters teaching me either, I’m just gonna win.” 

Pope wrinkled his nose and rolled his eyes. “Micah’s embarrassed I’m coming. I’ll probably fall off my board paddling in.” 

That didn’t make any sense. “Wait, you’re not going to win?” 

“No, for sure not.” 

“Then why are you going?” Pope Heyward not freaking out about being perfect at everything?

Pope shrugged. “I mean, fun? Everyone does this. Seems like a cool way to spend a weekend, and Kiara Carrera said there’s free Gatorade.”

“Is Kiara Carrera coming?” 

“Yeah, of course.” 

As if Pope was an expert on Kiara Carrera. Kiara Carrera was the cutest girl in sixth grade and JJ was pretty sure he had a crush on her. 

At the mainland, Heyward took them away from the crowd heading to the Christ Love beach and John B hit JJ every time he started to point out that they were going to miss registering for a good spot, but eventually he overrode that and said, “We’re not going to get a spot!” 

“I registered you little fools online,” Heyward said, “I told you, I ain’t sponsoring kids who don’t compete. Your time ain’t for three hours.” 

Oh. 

Heyward led them into a gas station store and shoved water bottles at each of them and handed them donuts from the case and John B sneakily gave JJ his donut which normally he’d throw back at him but his stomach was growling so loud that coughing wasn’t covering it anymore so he took it. Heyward was so distracted he didn’t even notice, he just gave John B another donut which meant JJ still got two.

“We should always get sponsored,” he whispered to John B, “this is the best con we’ve ever run.” 

Pope hadn’t been to Christ’s Love before, and JJ noticed how he looked around, all overwhelmed, and decided to sponsor Pope. He grabbed his wrist and said, “Hey, let me introduce you around, I’ll show you where the hotdogs are and stuff.” 

He assumed Pope would be talking about school and math and stuff, but he was cool. John B bailed to catch up with some kid of his dad’s army friend, and JJ didn’t really mind being alone with Pope. JJ introduced him to Double Ed, a ninth-grader so cool he couldn’t believe he talked to him and John B, and he was nervous Pope would nerd him away, but he didn’t. Double Ed showed off his new phone with Pokemon Go, Pope excitedly talked about the cards he got from his uncle and invited Double Ed to come over and check it out if he came to Kildare.

“Weird you’re not talking about school,” JJ eventually said when John B had split off away from them. 

“We’re not at school. Do you think I’m an NPC or something?” 

“No,” JJ said because even if he didn’t know what an NPC was, he knew he was wrong anyway. 

They found Kiara Carrera when they went to get more hot dogs and Gatorade. She was stretching her arms out and had earbuds in. Pope waved to her, and she waved back and grinned. “I heard you were coming!” she said, hugging Pope. “Did you bring any friends?” 

“JJ and I are friends now,” Pope said, with as much confidence as if it was true so JJ decided it was true too. “John B too. Who are you here with?”

Kiara Carrera shrugged. “My parents. They said I could walk around as long as I come back in an hour.” 

“You should come with us,” JJ decided, “we’re a lot of fun.”

John B was the leader, but they were the ones who made the Pogues. He was on the other side of the beach when it happened, and enthusiastically welcomed this new version of their lives when JJ came back with Kiara and Pope, but it wasn’t about him. Maybe that’s why it didn’t wreck them when he left, not as a group anyway. 

Heyward didn’t get his money’s worth. 

After the seventeen-year-olds surfed, everyone crowded around the judging tent, waiting to hear who won. The twelve-year-olds came first, and they knew Pope wouldn’t place because on his run Pope fell off his board almost as soon as he stood but he didn’t care. He was standing by John B and Pope and Heyward, getting more and more nervous as they announced the twelve-year-old girls. They started with third place and read out “John Routledge” and John B whooped and grabbed his shoulders from the side and shook him. JJ shoved him off, he wasn’t going to miss his name just because he was getting grabbed. Someone named Kyle Embalk got second and when he heard “John Jacob Maybank in first” read out in a bored sounding voice over the speakers, he waited for a second to make sure he heard it right but once John B grabbed him again and cheered he knew it was right. 

John B cheered but JJ  _ screamed  _ and jumped and thrashed and felt fucking  _ amazing _ and good and the best he was the best. Other kids figured he won and they congratulated him too and it felt amazing but then it was over. They announced all the other winners, and Heyward brought him to the side of the tent to get his trophy but it was smaller than he expected and there weren’t any newspaper people. No one was going to take his picture. 

He still felt good, but some bad started to crawl back in. 

“Are you still going to sponsor us?” he asked Heyward. “No one interviewed us.” 

“They still saw your board with my sticker, didn’t they? I got my money's worth.” Heyward drove him home, and if Dad got woken up that morning and was mad, he was too high to be mad anymore so JJ hid his trophy in his room and he took it out any time he needed to remember he was good at something. 

Heyward still sponsored them for two more years. Each year they got better, and became a little different people, and so did their friends who they only saw at Christ’s Love. When they were fifteen they had their own money, and John B looked at him like he was crazy when JJ reminded him they had to go to the store to ask about being sponsored. “You know that was just a trick to get a ride, right? We can handle ourselves now.” 

John B was really stupid sometimes, but JJ had to admit that was true. 

* * *

In the spring the great “saving for a car” project resumed, a project that JJ forgot about most of the time, but remembered clearly every time they had to walk their boards to the water. Last fall Pope created the First National Heyward-Maybankbank, a shoebox under their bed, and they both had to put a cut of their pay into it. 

Before their winter hiatus, the First National Heyward-Maybankbank had a balance of $284, but when they resumed in spring the balance was $157 because they had to take out loans and honestly considering how wack winter could get that was a respectable amount to start with again. 

“We’re doing great,” Pope said confidently when their account shot up to $710 a couple months after Spring Break season started. Once they got out of school for summer in a few weeks it would be crazy flush. “We need to start looking for cars.” 

Kie reached for the shoebox and her eyebrows shot up at the wads of ones and fives rubber-banded together. JJ got himself promoted to waiter. One day Nathan was interviewing randos and when JJ asked, said they needed summer waitstaff and he said, “I’ll do it.” 

Nathan looked him over, and JJ knew his uniform was clean, and he wasn’t visibly high or bruised or vibrating with fury and in other words, was the picture of a perfect waiter. “I’ve worked here forever, these idiots tell me their orders anyway, I know the menu and how to enter them. You don’t even have to train me.” 

“You need to be polite.” 

“I’m so good at being polite. I’m funny too, and full of local color. They love that shit. You already decided to hire me.” 

“And write down orders and enter them correctly every time.” 

“Dude, I know how to do that.” He knew how to memorize anything, including complicated orders and where different stuff was on the touchpad you entered orders in, so. Same thing. Actually, way better. Nathan acted like it was a major risk, so he hired JJ on a “trial basis” then forgot about it and gave him shifts every night because tourists fucking ate up his local color. He was working on an equation for exactly how much saying “ain’t never” one time added to his tip. It was at least two dollars. 

It was excruciating sometimes, smiling while they complained about their scuba diving lessons, but the money was worth it. Enough to buy weed, contribute to the winter fund, and have extra for the car, no problem. And JJ was lying a lot less in general, he had to maintain his skills somehow.

“You need to get a bank account,” Kie said, handing the box bank to JJ, then immediately held up one hand in a kind of absent surrender, “yes, yes, you’re too poor for banks. I’m a rich person oversimplifying things. But who is going to accept a shoebox full of tips for a car?” 

“Literally anyone on the Cut,” Pope said. 

“‘Literally anyone on the Cut’ is going to tell your dad that you tried to buy a car with a box of cash.” 

JJ took another look at the box. They hadn’t told the parents about the car savings account, and they hadn’t had to talk about why. This was $710 that wasn’t helping with groceries or bills or winter savings. And the parents would complicate things trying to make them do it right.

“Kie’s right,” Pope admitted, “We should probably tell them. If we just show up with a car one day it won’t go over well.” 

Pope lost the coin toss so on a Sunday when Ms. H woke them up early and said they had to go to church, even JJ and Heyward, right beforehand he stretched while Mom tried to fix JJ’s hair and Heyward poured coffee in a thermos and said, “So JJ and I are saving up for a car.” 

Which was smart, because if they were mad, there was only so much yelling that could happen before they were all late to church, and since church lasted four hundred hours, the grace of God and time would make any part two of yelling a lot less intense. 

“Well about damn time,” Mom said, gently shoving JJ’s hair down, then giving up when it didn’t do what she wanted. “You’re getting too old of us to drive you around anymore.” 

“You’re not mad?” he asked. 

“About what? You two sneaking around like we’re blind? At least it’s for something good. Pope’s gonna need a car in Chapel Hill, everything ain’t walking distance like here.” 

It was anticlimactic, really. 

Heyward sat them down nine million hours later, after church, and bummed the whole thing up with talking about gas and maintenance. Nearly laughed them out of the house when they suggested they could get gas for free from the pump Heyward owned on the dock. He didn’t mention insurance or registration, which was a relief because their parents expected them to do some things the Kook way but that would have been ridiculous. He mostly wanted to talk about how they’d share the car. 

“Y’all gotta talk about this,” Heyward said, “Who gets the car when Pope’s in Chapel Hill, and JJ’s here?” 

“I’m going with him,” JJ said. 

“Yeah,” Pope said. 

They hadn’t talked about it, the future was still a soft, vaporous thing to JJ but it seemed like a given that he would just go with, and it felt good but not surprising that Pope agreed. Kie was straight up from the beginning that she was going to travel the world, hell travel to other planets if she could. But Pope wanted UNC, and it was almost as important to JJ as it was to him to get there. He was coming, he was part of the plan, it didn’t need to be said out loud. 

Heyward looked very surprised by it though. “JJ can’t--kid you trying to get into UNC?” 

“No,” he said, laughing. He was on his way to get more C’s and B’s, but even if he could get in, the last thing he wanted to do is sit in a classroom any more minutes than he had to. “I’m just gonna go.” 

“They got dorms though,” Heyward said, “They gonna let JJ live with you?” 

“Yeah, right? Why wouldn’t they?” JJ asked, looking at Pope for confirmation. 

Pope held up his hands, putting a pause on this. “I looked it up, I can get out of living in a dorm to live with family, so just adopt JJ by then. We have a whole year to figure it out.”

Heyward gave up. “I'll tell you what, when you end up fighting about where the car goes, don’t you be anywhere near me when you do it. Now, you wanna be secretive about finding a car to buy and get ripped off, or you wanna loop your daddy in and get a deal?” 

“Loop our daddy in,” JJ said, “Can you get us a Lexus?” 

* * *

The first time JJ called her “Mom” to her face, Ms. H didn’t realize it for a few minutes. He’d been kind of stressing out, because even though everyone had been calling her his mom for months, and he’d said it once or twice to Pope and a lot more times in his brain, there was still the chance she’d laugh so hard she couldn’t breathe, then once she stopped, tell him to get the fuck out of here now and never say that shit again. 

Like, it wasn’t likely, but it was possible. He’d miscalculated that bad before. 

He spent weeks looking for a chance to try it out. He was alone in the car with her on the way home from work sometimes, but that was too alone, but around Heyward or Pope was too not alone. Kie asked if he was worried Heyward would suddenly want to be called “Dad” which was a hilarious question because she’d met Heyward. Dude probably wished Pope called him Heyward. And that was just harder, it wasn’t time. But it felt wrong every time he said "Ms. H."

Pope got mega stressed out on cue two weeks before finals, which was three weeks before Christ’s Love Surf Off so they very badly needed to be surfing, not studying nonstop which is what they were doing. Once Pope got past a certain level of studying intensity, their parents jumped on the stress wave and JJ had to get stressed too just to match their energy. 

By this point last year, JJ and John B just about stopped going to school to surf all day to prepare for Christ’s Love. They had a joke that this was the closest they’d get to being real Christians, not just default Southern Christians and because God would notice them just barely enough to see them saying “Christ’s Love” forty times a conversation. JJ placed first every year since he was twelve, except fifteen which was another story but that wasn’t his fault. Every time a parent stopped him from leaving the house he saw coming first in the Boys 17 competition slipping further away. 

Mom grabbed him by the shoulders and led him to the table. He was pretty sure she threatened Nathan because he was only working on Thursday and Friday which meant he got forced to study every other night. She led him into his chair and sat next to him. “Isn’t this nice, the two of us here to work on your English. And look, you dropped your backpack in the dead middle of the kitchen, almost like you knew this would happen.” 

JJ groaned and half-heartedly reached for his backpack, a few feet out of reach by the fridge. “Mom, I have to go surf. That’s my real future, not  _ The Outsiders _ . That’s my present.” 

“Yes it is your present, it is the only thing you have to worry about. Did you finish it?” 

He knew he’d said it the second it came out, there was no accidentally calling someone “Mom.” She didn’t look like she noticed at all though, and he felt sinking disappointment that he’d have to work himself up to do this all over again another time. 

“Yes.” Yes, he got the app Kiara put on this phone to read the SparkNotes summary out loud. Yes, he got that this was the wrong time to try saying it. Maybe she was ignoring it on purpose. 

“Yes you finished the book, or yes you finished your final reflection packet?” 

“I have a reflection packet?” 

“Oh good Lord. Get your backpack up off the floor.” 

With a sigh, he got up and grabbed his backpack by the top loop. Behind him, she suddenly said, “Oh!” 

JJ turned around and saw she’d stood up too. “JJ did you call me ‘Mom’?” 

She was so easy to read, he knew that’s probably the only way he got this far. She was happy. 

“Yes.”

“On purpose?” 

“Yes. Is that okay?” 

Like she’d given them permission, tears filled her eyes, she stepped toward him, and JJ stepped to her just as quickly, reaching out to hug her tight. Her hand came up to the back of his head, and he pressed his eyes into her shoulder, even though he wasn’t crying, and even if he was he wouldn’t have to hide it. She smelled like the ocean and home and permission and love and he decided he’d done this perfectly right. 

“You do that as often as you want,” she said, “in front of whoever you want, whenever you want. It’s better than okay. And you call Lulu ‘Mom’ too, it’s the twenty-first century there’s room for lots of Moms. Okay?” 

“Okay,” he said quietly. 

This was so easy. He didn’t know why it took so long. 

He still couldn’t imagine calling Heyward ‘Dad’, maybe mostly because his first Mom had been gone for six years, and even if there was room for two people to be called ‘Dad’, they talked about his first Dad all the time, even now that JJ got rid of him, he’d have to see lawyers to legally get Dad to fuck off, and Corrine said her boss said he had to see a therapist and he knew what that would be about, and it felt like every time he said the word “Dad” it got harder to say. Much less consider transferring the word or sharing. It was a relief knowing that Heyward would understand, even if JJ didn't know the specifics of how. 

Maybe someday he could call Heyward ‘Had’ or something ridiculous like that. 

Mom took her hand off his head and patted him on the back, gently ending the hug. He remembered what Pope earlier about her doing anything for him after he’d called her Mom.

JJ pulled away. “Hey, Mom?”

She smiled. “Yes?” 

“Are you so happy you’re gonna let me surf?” 

Mom laughed. “JJ, I am so happy and I love you so much that I’m going to make sure you don’t get held back, is what I’m going to do. Sit down, and find your homework.” 

It was worth a shot. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


This story didn’t talk nearly enough about the exact ways school was both a quest towards greatness and a tortuous trial for Pope, and that was going to be the story soon but right now the story was that once again, Pope got seven A’s, and he got a few new scholarships under his belt and when his SAT scores came back he lay on the kitchen floor and cried and no one knew if that was good until he said he was twenty points above the 75% percentile of people who got into UNC and that was _ great _ . 

He had no idea what grades Kie got because she didn’t care that much, but what she did care a lot about was that she joined the modern dance group at school just to try it, and she made friends she wasn’t cosmically tied to. Half the time she came back from rehearsals she had some mega weird but clearly fucked up girl drama to talk about, but she also had stories about Adelaide and Opal who were her new friends and that was really fucking good. 

  
JJ got three B’s and three C’s and Ms. Z, his English teacher, said, “If you have another year like this next year, you’re going to be more than set for adulthood,” and that felt great and so did bringing the storage cabinets he made as a surprise to the store and installing them in Heyward’s office with him and how he said, “If I’d known you were capable of being this thoughtful I woulda stolen you a long time ago” which was kind of weird but mostly felt really fucking good. When JJ started at the tech campus, he thought he’d like welding best, but he liked making, not melting, and Mr. Logan said he could make mad money building cabinets or boats and those felt like fucking good options. 

But even better than all that was the first Monday without school. Kie drove up just after sunrise and texted  _ u lazy bastards awake  _ to their group chat and the answer was “barely” but it didn’t take long to change into swim trunks and toast a waffle to bring to her car. They got to their favorite shore early enough to have it to themselves, and were able to surf all together without worrying about their shit. Pope took the first wave, with mad grace and skill and JJ couldn’t help but remember how he fell off his board at his first Christ’s Love and that was somehow even more impressive. 

JJ loved surfing from the first time he got on a board. He loved how his world went from loud and fast to silent in the roar of the waves, and his brain narrowed from nervous static to one single, perfect task. He wiped out on an easy maneuver and while he paddled away from the rip current he reflected that for all the time he’d spent working or doing homework or with his friends and family this season, he literally might not be the best seventeen-year-old at Christ’s Love. It might be Pope or some other kid whose life was so fucked that he surfed like it’d keep him alive. 

God, he still wanted to get first though. He loved surfing and liked being the best. It was his last year at Christ’s Love and he didn’t know what he’d be like a year, or where adults had surf competitions he could do, it could be his last. 

It was Pope who was able to surf the longest. JJ and Kie left their boards on the shore next to her keys and JJ's boots and treaded water nearby, while Pope got creative on each wave, wiping out more often than if he was trying to do it perfectly. 

“It feels weird, summer coming,” Kie said. 

“Why?” 

“Without John B. It just won’t be the same.” 

JJ knew what she meant, the creeping knowledge that summer was coming without him was something he’d be avoiding. They’d had a fall and a spring and a winter without him, but their lives were stifled then by weather and school and survival. Summer was always their time when money came in just as fast as they could spend it, and the entire island belonged to them and even Pope and Kie’s parents were too busy to stop them from having a good time. John B was their captain, and without them who knew what they’d do. 

JJ remembered how mad his friends were at him last summer, all the crazy stupid things he did that he still stood by, even if he didn’t acticipate holding guns to people heads this summer. Yeah smoke, yeah party, year take shit if he needed it, get a little crazier than anyone wanted him to. But he couldn’t say he was in a big rush for a redo of last summer. 

They were all different, almost a year older and grown. “Even if John B was here it wouldn’t be the same,” JJ said, “for one, we didn’t even know the word queerplatonic last year. Could you imagine if anyone told us what would happen?” 

“We would have laughed at them,” Kie laughed. She took a deep breath and dipped underwater, then came back up pulling her wet hair away from her face. “So much for no pogues macking on other pogues. I would have been so pissed at my present self. Like, double pissed.” 

“Me too,” JJ agreed. He let himself fall back and float on the water. “I would have thought I’m such a major pussy now. I would have beat myself up.” 

“You kind of would have beaten _anyone_ up.” 

“Man, was I cool.” 

Eventually, Pope gave up and they shook the sand out of their hair and went to The Wreck to beg for food and they did it all over again the next day. Summer didn’t really start until after Christ’s Love so they had a grace period to figure out what their seventeen-year-old selves would turn the summer into. 

The night before the surf off, Kie came over and got roped into cleaning the house with them. After Christ’s Love, they were supposed to come straight home for a low country boil with Mom’s family, and even though everyone would be outside the whole time they had to clean the house like the queen was coming but Kie didn’t mind. 

When Mom and Heyward found them hanging out in back, without warning them Kie said, “Hey Mr. and Mrs. H, could I just sleep over? I have all my stuff in my car, and we’re leaving so early for Christ’s Love.” 

They looked at each other with mock-serious faces. Mom broke it with a laugh, “You hear that honey? Kiara is asking permission, not just banging up the side of our house then slamming the front door in the morning.” 

They froze. They were so careful, Kie definitely didn’t slam the front door. “Yes,” Kie said slowly, “that’s exactly what’s happening.” 

Heyward hit JJ’s shoe, and he sat up on the metal bench to let him sit down. “We ain’t stupid. We just figure you ain’t having sex in front of JJ.” 

“Dad!” Pope cried. 

“They fully are not,” JJ said, completely honestly. 

“I’m just disappointed you ain’t ask me to sponsor you two for Christ’s Love,” Heyward said. “All that cheap advertising I’m losing out on.” 

“You’re already sponsoring me,” JJ said. 

For some reason, it took that and five years for it to click that Heyward was never sponsoring them for any reason except to lend a hand to two poor kids who’d asked for his help. He’d always imagined that he was pulling one over on Heyward, not the other way around.

JJ wondered how much rewriting he’d do as he spiraled further away from the kid he used to be. 

* * *

Whether he placed first in the morning was another story. Not because it was too scary to tell again, or hard to tell, or boring, or distracting, or not ready. Because at this point on the spiral, getting and winning and impressing and surviving wasn’t the only story JJ had to tell. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end of this one! But THERE IS MORE TO COME! We have a whole summer ahead of us, the triad has a lot to do over the summer, and JJ has to go to therapy which you know he'll hate! Keep an eye out for more, and subscribe to the series to get notified when I post. 
> 
> While you're on the series page, there's a playlist from the songs the chapter title are drawn from. This title is from "Going to Port Washington" by the Mountain Goats (which I had in my head while writing but didn't realize how perfect the lyrics were until right before posting. Did I cry? Yes.) 
> 
> But before you go please comment! I am so grateful to how generous and positive and engaged so many of y'all have been, and I would love to hear how you feel about this installment's ending <3


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